
Class 
Book. 



iM<:i;sK.\Ti:i) hy 




Pof/on- sfCUp. 



VIEW 



THE STATE OF EUROPE 



THE MIDDLE AGES 



BY 

HENRY HALLAM, LL.D., F.R.A.S. 



INCORPORATING IN THE TEXT THE AUTHOR'S LATEST RESEARCHES 

WITH ADDITIONS FROM RECENT WRITERS, AND ADAPTED 

TO THE USE OF STUDENTS 



BY 

WILLIAM SMITH, D.C.L., LL.D. 



NEW YORK : 40 East 14th Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street 



\tn\ 






GIFT 
•OL. G. M. TOWNSEND 
OCT. 22. 1940 



PREFACE. 



The present edition of the " History of the Middle Ages " 
has been undertaken with the concurrence of Mr. HalLam's 
representatives, who consider tliat a great injustice has been 
done to his literary character by the rej^rint of the obsolete 
edition of 1810, after it had been superseded by the author's 
own careful revision, and had been enriched by many sup- 
plemental notes, which added one-third to the original size of 
the work. 

A few words are necessary to explain the plan which the 
editor has adopted in order to bring the work within one 
volume, available for the use of students. It must not be 
regarded as an abridgment ; for though some omissions 
have been made, for reasons stated below, they are few in 
amount, and nothing essential or important has been left out. 
In fact, the great bulk of the book remains unchanged. But 
it is necessary to recollect the plan which Mr. Hallam pur- 
sued in the later editions of his work, in order to judge of 
the necessity and expediency of the alterations and omissions 
made in this edition. He informed his readers, in the Pref- 
ace to his '^ Supplemental Notes," " that he was always 
reluctant to make such alterations as would leave to the pur- 
chasers of former editions a right to complain," and that, 
being anxious to bring his work " nearer to the boundaries 
of the historic domain as it had been enlarged within his 
own age," he published in a separate form various disqui- 
sitions, in which his object was *'to reconsider those portions 
of the Work which related to subjects discussed by eminent 
writers since its publication, to illustrate and enlarge some 
passages which had been imperfectly or obscurely treated, 
and to acknowledge with freedom his own errors." Now, 
however much Ave may respect the author's motives in 
adopting this method, and his candor in acknowledging his 
errors, the plan is attended with the obvious inconvenience 

iii 



IV PREFACE. 

of having two books to consult instead of one, and of finding 
statements in the Text not unfrequently contradicted or mod- 
ified by corrections in the Xotes. Accordingly, in preparing 
the book for the use of Students, it seemed to the editor ad- 
visable to incorporate in the text the corrections made in 
the Notes, omitting such views as the author had himself 
rejected, and only inserting in the Supplemental Notes at the 
end of each chapter the information Avhich could not conven- 
iently be interwoven with the text. By this means, and by 
giving the conclusions at Avhich the author had arrived, with- 
out, m all cases, enumerating the opinions of writers which 
he mentioned only to reject, much space has been saved. 
Moreover, a further saving has been effected by occasionally 
abbreviating some of the less important remarks, and by 
leaving out most of the notes at the foot of the pages con- 
taining reference to authorities, which, however serviceable 
to historical inquirers, can be of no use to students in schools 
and colleges. 

The editor has added to the chapter on the Constitutional 
History of England various original documents which will 
be of great service to the student. Of these, the most im- 
portant are, the Statutes of William the Conqueror, the Char- 
ter of Liberties of Henry I., the Constitution of Clarendon, 
and the Assize of Clarendon, the Magna Charta, and the Con- 
firmation of the Charters. He has also inserted genealogical 
and other tables, and has supplied some information from ■ 
important works treating of the subjects discussed by Mr. 
Hallam Avhich have appeared since the last edition of his 
book. But such alterations and additions have been made 
sparingly, and it has been the aim of the Editor to present 
the work as nearly as possible in the form in which he con- 
ceives the Author would have wished it to appear if he had 
himself prepared an edition for the special use of students. 

Wm. Smith. 
London, May 10, 1871. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. The History of France, from its Conquest by Clovis to 
THE Invasion of Naples by Charles VIII.: 

Part 1 1 

Part II. — From the Accession of Philip of Valois 
to the Invasion of Naples by Charles 

VIII 38 

Notes to Chapter I. — Part I. 

I. The Armorican Republic Go 

II. The Franks (J5 

III. The Consulship of Clovis 05 

IV. The Mayor of the Palace G5 

V. Aquitaine 66 

VI. The Subjection of tliG Saxons 66 

VII. Charlemagne, Emperor 67 

VIII. The Kingdom of Burgundy 67 

IX. Authorities for French History 68 

II. On THE Feudal System, especially in France: 

Part 1 69 

Part II 89 

Notes to Chapter II. 

I. The Salic and other Laws of the Barbarians . . . l.'JS 

II. Trihntarii, Lidi, and Cohini i;J9 

III. Municipal Government 139 

HI. The History of Italy, from the Extinction of the Car- 
LoviNGiAN Emperors to the Invasion of Naples by 
Charles Vlll.: 

Part 1 140 

Part II 171 

Note to Chapter III. 

Authorities for Italian History 225 

IV. The History of Spain to the Conquest of Granada . . 227 

V. History of Germany to the Dirt of Worms, in 1495 . . 261 

VI. History of the Greeks and Saracens 293 

VII. History of Ecclesiastical Power during the Middle Ages : 

Part 1 308 

Part II 341 

VIII. The Anglo-Saxon Constitution: 

Part 1 376 

Notes to Chapter VIII. — Part I. 

I. The Brotwaldas 393 

II.- Saxon Kings of all Eni;land 394 

III. Eorls and Ceorls 3t)4 

IV. Tlie Witenagemot 396 

V. Trial by Jury 397 

v 



VI CONTENTS. 

CIIAPTEPv. PAGE. 

VIII. Part II. — The Anglo-Norman Constitution .... 400 
Notes to Chapter VIII. — Part II. 

I. The Legislation of the Great Council 4ol 

II. Duration of Distinction between Norinan and Saxon 431 

III. Statutes of William the Conqueror 432 

Part III. — The English Constitution 434 

Notes to Chapter VIII. — Part III.: 

I. Municipal Rights of London 539 

II. Popular Poetry 540 

IX. On the State of Society in Europe During the Middle 
Ages: 

Part 1 551 

Part II 585 

Notes to Chapter IX. — Part II. 

I. Domestic Architecture 678 

II. Petrarch's Laura B78 

III. Early Legislative use of English 079 



ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. 

I. Charter of Liberties of Henry 1 541 

II. Constitutions of Clarendon 541 

III. Assize of Clarendon 543 

IV. Magna Charta 544 

V. Confirmation of the Charters 549 

VI. Summons to the Parliament of H2()5 550 



GENEALOGICAL TABLES. 

Of the Successors of Louis the Debonair . . . 

Of tlu! Successors of Hugh Capet 

Of th(! House of Valois of France 

Of tlie Second Ducal House of T.urgundy . . 

Of the Kings of Naples of tlie House of Anjou 

Of the Kings of Sicily of tlie Hou.se of Aragou 

Of tlie Titular Kings of Naples of the Second House of Anjou 

Of the Respective Titles of the Competitors to the Crown of Aragon 



12 

19 

37 

58 

212 

212 

210 

249 



LISTS. 



Of Emperors during the Middle Ages, 
Of Popes during the Middle Ages . 



201 
308 



THE STUDENT'S 
HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE HISTORY OF FRANCE FROM ITS CONQUEST BY CLOVIS TO 
THE INVASION OF NAPLES BY CHARLES VIII. 

PAR r I. 

§ 1. Fall of the Roman Empire. §2. Invasion of Clovis. §3. The MEROVINGIANS, 
or first Race of French Kings. Accession of Pepin. §4. Tlie Caklovingians. 
State of Italy. §5. Cliarlemagne. His reign. §6. His Coronation as Emperor. 
§7. His Cliaracler. §8. Louis the Debonair. § 9. His Successors. § 10. Remarks 
upon theCarlovingian Period. § 11. Calamitous State of the Empire in the Ninth 
and I'enth Centuries. §12. The Hungarians. §13. The Normans. § H. Accession 
of Hugh Capet. § 15. "His first Successors. § 16. Louis VII. § 17. Philip Augus- 
tus. Conquest ot Normandy. § 18. War in Ijansuedoc. § 11). Louis IX. His 
Character. §20. Digression upon the Crusades. §21. Philip III. §22. Philip IV. 
Aggrandizement of Frencli Monarchy under his Heign. § 23. Suppression of the 
Knights Templars. § 21. Reigns of his Children. Question of Salic Law. § 25. 
Claim of Edward III. 

§ 1. Before the conclusion of the fifth century the mighty 
fabric of empire whicli valor and policy had founded upon the 
seven hills of Home was finally overthrown in all the west of 
Europe by the barbarous nations from the North, whose mar- 
tial energy and whose numbers Avere irresistible. A race of 
men, formerly unknown or despised, had not only dismem- 
bered that proud sovereignty, but permanently settled them- 
selves in its fairest provinces, and imposed their yoke upon 
the ancient possessors. The Vandals were masters of Africa ; 
the Suevi held part of Spain ; the Visigoths possessed the re- 
mainder, witli a large })orti()n of Gaul ; the lUirgundians occu- 
pied the provinces watered by the Rhone and Saone ; the 
Ostrogoths almost all Italy. The north-west of Gaul, between 
the Seine and the Loire, some writers have filled with an 
Armorican re^niblic ; ^ while the remainder was still nominally 
subject to the Roman Empire, and governed by a certain Syag- 
rius, rather with an independent than a deputed authority. 

' See Note I., " The Armorican Itepublic." 



2, INVASION OF CLOVIS. Chap. I. Part I. 

§ 2. At this time Clovis, king of the Salian Franks,^ a tribe 
of Germans long connected with Kome, and originally settled 
upon the right bank of the Rhine, but who had latterly pene- 
trated as tar as Tournay and Cambray, invaded Gaul, and 
defeated Syagrius at Soissons (a.d. 486). The result of this 
victory was the subjugation of those provinces which had pre- 
viously been considered as Roman. But as their allegiance 
had not been very strict, so their loss was not very severely 
felt ; since Anastasius, the Emperor of Constantinople, was 
not too proud to confer upon Clovis the titles of consul and 
patrician, which he was too prudent to refuse.^ 

§ 3. Clovis was the founder of the Merovixgian dynasty. 
But the history of this period is so intricate, that it may assist 
the memory to distribute it into the following divisions : — 

I. The Reign of Clovis (a.d. 481-511). — Some years after 
his recognition by the Emperor, Clovis defeated the Alemanni, 
or Suabians, in a great battle at Zulpich, near Cologne. In 
consequence of a vow, it was said, made during this engage- 
ment, and at the instigation of his wife Clotilda, a princess of 
Burgundy, he became a convert to Christianity (a.d. 496). It 
would be a fruitless inquiry whether he was sincere in this 
change ; but it is . certain, at least, that no policy could have 
been more successful. The Arian sect, which had been early 
introduced among the barbarous nations, was predominant, 
though apparently without intolerance, in the Burgundian and 
Visigoth courts ; but the clergy of Gaul were strenuously at- 
tached to the Catholic side, and, even before his conversion, 
had favored the arms of Clovis. They now became his most 
zealous supporters, and were rewarded by him Avith artful 
gratitude, and by his descendants Avith lavish munificence. 
Upon the pretence of religion he attacked Alaric, king of the 
Visigoths, and by one great victory near Poitiers, overthrowing 
their empire in Gaul, reduced them to the maritime province 
of Septimania, a narrow strip of coast between the Rhone and 
the Pyrenees (a.d. 507). The last exploits of Clovis were the 
reduction of certain independent chiefs of his own tribe and 
family, who were settled in the neighborliood of the Rhine. 
All these he put to death by force or treachery ; for he was 
cast in the true mould of conquerors, and may justly be ranked 
among the first of his class, both for the splendor and the 
guiltiness of his ambition. 

II. The Reigns of the four Sons of Clovis (a.d. 511-561). — 

2 See NoTK II., " The Franks." 

^ See NoTK III., " The Consulship of Clovis." 



France. THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY. 3 

Clovis left four sons; one illegitimate, or at least born be- 
fore his conversion ; and three by his queen Clotilda. These 
four made, it is said, an equal partition of his dominions, 
which comprehended not only France, but the western and 
central parts of Germany, besides Bavaria, and perhaps Suabia, 
which were governed by their own dependent, but hereditary,' 
chiefs. Thierry, the eldest, had what was called Austrasia, 
the eastern or German division, and fixed his capital at Metz ; 
Clodomir, at Orleans ; Childebert at Paris ; and Clotaire, 
at iSoissons. During their reigns the monarchy was aggran- 
dized by the conquest of Burgundy, and Provence, in Gaul it- 
self, while Thuringia, Suabia, and Bavaria, on the other side 
of the Khine, were added to their dominions. Clotaire, the 
youngest brother, ultimately reunited all the kingdoms. 

III. From the Death of Clotaire L to the Accession of Clo- 
taire II. (a.d. 561-613). — Ui)on the death of Clotaire I. a 
second partition among his four sons ensued ; the four king- 
doms of Paris, Soissons, Orleans, and Austrasia revived ; but 
a new partition of these was required by the recent conquests, 
and Gontran of Orleans, without resigning tliat kingdom, 
removed his residence to IJurgundy. The four kingdoms were 
reduced to three by the death of Caribert, king of Paris ; one, 
afterwards very celebrated by the name of Neustria, between 
the Scheldt and the Loire, was formed under Cliilperic, com- 
prehending those of Paris and Soissons. Caribert of Paris 
had taken Aquitaine, which at his death was divided among 
the three survivors ; Austrasia was the portion of Sigebert. 
This generation was fruitful of still more crimes than the 
last, redeemed by no golden glory of conquest. Fredegonde, 
the wife of Chilperic, diffused a baleful light over this period. 
But while she tyrannized with little control in the west of 
France, her rival and sister in crime, Brunehaut, wife of Sige- 
bert and mother of Thierry II., his successor, had to encounter 
a powerful opposition from the Austrasian aristocracy ; and in 
this part of the monarchy a new feature developed itself ; the 
great proprietors, or nobility, acted systematically with a view 
to restrain the royal power. Brunehaut, after many vicissi- 
tudes, and after having seen her two sons on the tlirones of 
Austrasia and Ikirgundy, fell into the hands of Clotaire II., 
king of the other division, and was sentenced to a cruel death.* 
Clotaire united the three Frank kingdoms. 

4 Tlie names of Fredegnnrte and Bruncliant :ire distingnished oven in lli;it iilcc for 
tlie magnitude of their crimes; of tlie ;iti-ocities of Fredegonde none liave iloubted; 
and IJruneliaut lias met witli advocates in modern times, less, perliaps, from any fair 
presumptions of lier innocence tluin from compassion for tlie cruel death which slie 



4 THE MEROVINGIAN DYNASTY. Chap. I. Part I. 

IV. Reigns of Glotaire II. and his son Dagohert I. (a.d. 613 
-638). — The royal power, though shaken by the Austrasian 
aristocracy, was still effective. Dagobert, a prince who seems 
to have rather excelled most of his family, and to whose 
munificence several extant monuments of architecture and the 

■ arts are referred, endeavored to stem the current. He was the 
last of the jNIerovingians who appears to have possessed any 
distinctive character 

V. From the Accession of Clovis II., Son of Dagohert, to 
Pepin HeristaUs Victory over the Neustrians at Testrij (a.d. 
638-687). — After Dagobert the kings of France dwindled into 
personal insignificance, and are generally treated by later his- 
torians as insensati, or idiots. The whole power of the king- 
dom devolved upon the mayors of the palace, originally officers 
of the household, through whom petitions or representations 
were laid before the king.^ The weakness of sovereigns 
rendered this office important, and still greater weakness suf- 
fered it to become elective ; men of energetic talents and 
ambition united it with military command ; and the history of 
France for half a century presents no names more conspicuous 
tlian those oi Ebroin and Grimoald, mayors of Neustria and 
Austrasia, the western and eastern divisions of the French 
monarchy.^ These, however, met witli violent ends ; but a 
more successful usurper of the royal authority was Pepin 
Heristal, firsti mayor, and afterwards duke, of Austrasia. After 
becoming the acknowledged head of this part of the kingdom, • 
he put an end to the independence of Neustria also by the 
decisive battle of Testry, fought in 687. The battle of Testry 
is one of the turning-points in French history. It gave the 
death-blow to Merovingian royalty : it brought to a termination 

unilerwent. Hrunehaut was no unimportant pcrsonnfro in this history. Slie liad 
bfconic hateful to the Austrasian aristocracy by licr (lothic blood, and still more by 
her Roman principles of government. There vvas evidently a combination to throw 
off the yoke of civilized tyranny. It was a great conflict, which ended in the virtual 
dethronement of the house of Clovis. Much, therefore, may have been exaggerated 
by Fredegarius, a Burgundian by birth, in relating the crimes of l.runehaut. Jiut, 
unhappily, the antecedent presumption, in the history of tliat age, is always on the 
worse side. She was unquestionably endowed with a masculine energy of mind, and 
very superior to such a mere imp of audacious wickedness as Fredegonde. Hrune- 
haut left a great and almost fabulous name ; j)ublic causeways, towers, castles, in 
different i)arts of France, are popularly ascrilx-d to her. It has even been suspected 
by some that she suggested the appellation of I'.riincchild in tlie Nibelungen Lied. 
That there is no resemblance in the story or in the character, courage excepted, of 
the two heroines, cannot be thought an objection. 

s See Note IV., » The Mayor of the Palace." 

^ The original kingdoms of Soissons, Paris, and Orleans were consolidated into 
that denominated Neustria, to which Burgundy was generally appendant, though 
distinctly governed by a mayor of its own election. But Aquitaine was, from the 
time of Dagobert I., separated from the rest of the monarchy, under a ducal dynasty, 
sprung from Aribert, brother of that monarch. See Notk V., " Aquitaine." 



Fkanck. accession OF PEPIN. 5 

the struggle between the two great members of the Frank 
empire ; it assured the preponderance of Teutonic over Koman 
Gaul. Pepin fixed his residence at Cologne, and his family 
seldom kept their court at Paris. The kingdoms of Austrasia 
and Neustria rested on different bases. In the former the 
Franks were more numerous, less scattered, and, as far as we 
can perceive, had a more considerable nobility. They had re- 
ceived a less tincture of Koman policy. They were nearer to 
the mother country, which had been, as the earth to Antieus, 
the source of perpetually recruited vigor. Burgundy, a member 
latterly of the Neustrian monarchy, had also a powerful aris- 
tocracy, but not in so great a degree, probably, of Frank, or 
even barbarian descent. It is highly important to keep in 
mind this distinction between Austrasia and Neustria, sub- 
sisting for some ages, and, in fact, only replaced, speaking 
without exact geographical precision, by that of Germany and 
France. 

VI. From the Battle of Testry to the Accession of Pepin le 
Bref (a.d. 687-752). — From this time the family of Pepin 
was virtually sovereign in France, though at every vacancy 
kings of the royal house were placed by them on the throne. 
Charles Martel, indeed, son of Pepin, was not acknowledged, 
even in Austrasia, for a short time after his father's death, 
and Neustria attempted to regain her independence ; but he 
was soon called to power, defeated, like his father, the west- 
ern Franks, and became, in almost as great a degree as his 
grandson, the founder of a new monarcliy. But in 732 he 
was called upon to encounter a new and terrible enemy. 
The Saracens, after subjugating Spain, had penetrated into 
the very heart of France. Charles Martel gained a complete 
victory over them between Tours and Poitiers, in which 
300,000 Mohammedans are hyperbolically asserted to have 
fallen. The reward of this victory was the province of Septi- 
mania, wliich the Saracens had conquered from the Visigoths. '^ 

Such powerful subjects were not likely to remain long 
contented without the crown ; but the circumstances under 

7 Tlie victory of Charles Martel lias immortalized Iiis name, and may be justly reck- 
oned among those few battles of wliich a contrary event would liave essentially varied 
the drama of the world in all its subsequent scenes ; with Marathon, Arbella, the Me- 
taurus, Cliiilons.and Leipsic. Yet do we not judge a little too m\ich by the event, and 
follow, as usual, in the wake of fortune? Has not more frequent experience con- 
demned those wlio set the fate of empires upon a single cast, and risk a general bat- 
tle witli invaders, whose greater peril is in delay? Was not this the fatal error by 
whicli Koderichad lost his kingdom? Was it possible that the Saracens could have 
retained any permanent possession of France, except by means of a victory? And 
did not the contest upon the broad champaign of Toitou alford them a considerable 
prospect of success, whicli a more cautious policy would have withheld? 



6 THE CARLOVINGIANS. Chap. I. Part I. 

which it was transferred from the race of Clovis are connected 
with one of the most important revolutions in the history of 
Europe. The Mayor Pepin, surnamed le Bref, to distinguish 
him from his grandfather, inheriting his father Charles Mar- 
tel's talents and ambition, made, in the name and with the 
consent of the nation, a solemn reference to the pope Zacha- 
rias, as to the deposition of Chilperic III., under whose 
nominal authority he himself was reigning. The decision was 
favorable ; that he who possessed the power should also bear 
the title of king. The unfortunate Merovingian was dismissed 
into a convent, and the Franks, with one consent, raised Pepin 
to the throne, the founder of a more illustrious dynasty (a.d. 
752). In order to judge of the importance of this revolution 
to the See of Rome as well as to France, we must turn our 
eyes upon the affairs of Italy. 

§4. The Carlovingians. — The dominion of the Ostrogoths 
was annihilated by the arms of Belisarius and Narses in the 
sixth century, and that nation appears no more in history. 
But not long afterwards the Lombards, a people for some 
time settled in Pannonia, not only subdued that northern 
part of Italy which has retained their name, but, extending 
themselves southward, formed the powerful duchies of 8\)o- 
leto and P>enevento. The residence of their kings was in 
Pavia ; but the hereditary vassals, who held those two duchies, 
might be deemed almost independent sovereigns. The rest 
of Italy was governed by exarchs, deputed by the Greek 
emperors, and fixed at Ravenna. In Rome itself neither the 
peo])le nor the bishops, who had already conceived in part 
their schemes of ambition, were much inclined to endure the 
superiority of Constantinople ; yet their disaffection was coun- 
terbalanced by the inveterate hatred, as well as jealousy, 
with which they regarded the Lombards. But an impolitic 
and intemperate persecution, carried on by two or three Greek 
emperors against a favorite superstition, the worship of images, 
excited commotions throughout Italy, of which the Lombards 
took advantage, and easily Avrested the exarchate of Ravenna 
from the Eastern empire (a.d. 752). It was far from the 
design of the popes to see their nearest enemies so much 
aggrandized ; and any effectual assistance from the Emperor, 
Constantine (^opronymus, would have kept Rome still faithful. 
But having no liope from his arms, and ])rovoked by his obsti- 
nate intolerance, the pontiffs had recourse to France, and the 
service they had rendered to Pepin led to reciprocal obligations 
of the greatest magnitude. At the request of Stephen LL the 



FuANCE. CHARLEMAGNE. < 

new king of France descended from the Alps, drove the Lom- 
baids from their recent con(|uests, and conferred tliem upon 
the pope. Tliis memorable donation nearly comprised the 
modern provinces of liomagna and the March of Ancona. 

§5. CiiARLKMAGNE (a.d. 768-814). — The State of Italy, 
which had undergone no change for nearly two centuries, was 
now ra^jidly verging to a great revolution. Under the shadow 
of a mighty name the Greek empire had concealed the extent 
of its decline. That charm was now broken; and the Lom- 
bard kingdom, which had hitherto appeared the only competi- 
tor in tlie lists, proved to have lost its own energy in awaiting 
the occasion for its display. France was far more than a 
match for the power of Italy, even if she had not been guided 
by the towering ambition and restless activity of the son of 
Pepin. It was almost the iirst exploit of Charlemagne, after 
the death of his brother Carloman had reunited the Frankish 
empire under his dominion, to subjugate the kingdom of Lom- 
bardy (a.d. 774). Neitlier Favia nor Verona, its most con- 
siderable cities, interposed any material delay to his arms ; 
and the chief resistance he encountered was from the dukes of 
Friuli and lienevento, the latter of whom could never be brought 
into thorough subjection to the conqueror. Italy, however, be 
the cause what it might, seems to have tempted Charlemagne 
far less than the dark forests of Germany. For neither the 
southern provinces nor Sicily could have withstood his power 
if it had been steadily directed against them. Even Spain 
hardly drew so much of his attention as the splendor of the 
prize might naturally have excited. He gained, however, a 
very important accession to his empire, by conquering from 
the Saracens the territory contained between the Pyrenees and 
the Ebro. This was formed into the Spanish March, governed 
by the Count of Barcelona, part of which at least must be con- 
sidered as appertaining to France till the twelfth century. 

But tlie most tedious and difficult achievement of Charle- 
magne was the reduction of the Saxons. The wars with this 
nation, who occupied nearly the modern circles of Westphalia 
and Lower Saxony, lasted for thirty years. Whenever the 
conqueror withdrew his armies, or even his person, the Saxons 
broke into fresh rebellion, Avhich his unparalleled rapidity of 
movement seldom failed to crush without delay. From such 
perseverance on either side, destruction of the weaker could 
alone result. A large colony of Saxons were finally trans- 
])lanted into Flanders and Brabant, countries hitherto ill- 
peopled, in which their descendants preserved the same 



8 CHARLEMAGNE. Chap. I. Pakt I. 

unconquerable spirit of resistance to oppression. Many fled to 
the kingdoms of Scandinavia, and, mingling with the North- 
men, who were just preparing to run their memorable career, 
revenged upon the children and subjects of Charlemagne the 
devastation of Saxony. Tlie remnant embraced Christianity, 
their aversion to which had been the chief cause of tlieir re- 
bellions, and acknowledged the sovereignty of Charlemagne 
— a submission which even Witikind, the second Arminius 
of Germany, after such irresistible conviction of her destiny, 
did not disdain to make. But they retained, in the main, 
their own laws ; they were governed by a duke of their own 
nation, if not of their own election ; and for many ages they 
were distinguished by their original character among the na- 
tions of Germany.^ 

The success of Charlemagne on the eastern frontier of his 
empire against the Sclavonians of liohemia and Huns or Avars 
of Pannonia, though obtained witli less cost, was hardly less 
eminent. In all his wars the newly conquered nations, or 
those whom fear had made de})endent allies, were employed to 
subjugate their neighbors, and the incessant waste of fatigue 
and the sword was supplied by a fresh population that swelled 
the expanding circle of dominion. The limits of tlie new 
AVestern empire are not very exactly defined by contemporary 
writers, nor would it be easy to appreciate the degree of sub- 
jection in which tlie Sclavonian tribes were held. As an 
organized mass of provinces, regularly governed by imperial 
officers, it seems to have been nearly bounded, in Germany, by 
the Elbe, the Saale, the Bohemian mountains, and a line drawn 
from thence crossing the Danube above Vienna, and prolonged 
to the Gulf of Istria, Part of Dalmatia was comprised in the 
Duchy of Friuli. In Italy the empire extended not much be- 
yond tlie modern frontier of Naples, if we exclude, as was the 
fact, the Duchy of Benevento from anything more than a 
titular subjection. The Spanish boundary, as has been said 
already, was the Ebro. 

§ 6. A seal was put to the glory of Charlemagne when Leo 
III., in the name of the Roman people, placed upon his head 
the imperial crown (a.d. 800). His father, Pepin, had borne 
the title of Patrician, and he had himself exercised, with that 
title, a regular sovereignty over Rome. Money was coined in 
his name, and an oath of fidelity was taken by the clergy and 
people. But the appellation of Emperor seemed to phiee his 
authority over all his subjects on a new footing. It was full 

8 See Note VI., " The Subjection of the Saxons." 



Fkance. CHAUACTER OF ClIAKLEMAGXE. 9 

of high and indefinite pretension, tending to oversliadow the 
free election of the Fraidvs by a fictitious descent from Augus- 
tus. A fresh oatli of fidelity to him as emperor was demanded 
from his subjects.^ 

§ 7. In analyzing the characters of heroes it is hardly pos- 
sible to separate altogether the share of fortune from their own. 
The epoch made by Charlemagne in the history of the world, 
the illustrious families which prided themselves in him as their 
progenitor, the very legends of romance, which are full of his 
fal)ul()us exploits, have cast a lustre around his head, and tes- 
tify the greatness that has embodied itself in his name. None, 
indeed, of Charlemagne's wars can be compared with the 
Saracenic victory of Charles Martel ; but that was a contest for 
freedom, his for conquest ; and fame is more ]jartial to success- 
ful aggression than to patriotic resistance. As a scholar, his 
acquisitions were probably little superior to those of his unre- 
spected son ; and in several points of view the glory of Cliarle- 
magne might be extenuated by an analytical dissection. But, 
rejecting a mode of judging equally uncandid and fallacious, 
we shall find that he possessed in everything that grandeur of 
conception which distinguishes extraordinary minds. Like 
Alexander, he seemed born for universal innovation : in a life 
restlessly active, we see him reforming the coinage and estab- 
lishing the legal divisions of money; gathering about him the 
learned of every country ; founding schools and collecting li- 
braries ; interfering, but with the tone of a king, in religious 
controversies ; aiming, though prematurely, at tlie formation 
of a naval force ; attempting, for the sake of commerce, the 
magnificent enterprise of uniting the Khine and Danube ; and 
meditating to nundd the discordant codes of Roman and bar- 
barian laws into a uniform system. 

The great qualities of Charlemagne were, indeed, alloyed by 
the vices of a barbarian and a conqueror. Nine wives, whom 
he divorced with very little ceremony, attest the license of his 
private life, which his temperance and frugality can hardly be 
said to redeem. Unsparing of blood, though not constitution- 
ally cruel, and wliolly indifferent to the means which his am- 
bition prescribed, he beheaded in one day four thousand 
Saxons — an act of atrocious butchery, after which his perse- 
cuting edicts, pronouncing the pain of death against those who 
refused baptism, or even who ate flesh during Lent, seem 
scarcely worthy of notice. This union of barbarous ferocity 
with elevated views of national improvement might suggest 

9 See Note VII., " Charlemagne, Emperor." 



10 LOUIS THE DEBONAlll. Cuap. I. Pakx I. 

tlie parallel of Peter the Great. But the degrading habits and 
l)rute violence of the Muscovite place him at an immense dis- 
tance from the restorer of the em])ire. 

A strong sympatliy for intellectual excellence was the lead- 
ing characteristic of Charlemagne, and this undoubtedly biased 
him in the chief political error of his conduct — that of en- 
conraging the power and pretensions of the Inerarchy. But, 
perhaps, his gi-eatest eulogy is written in the disgraces of suc- 
ceeding times and the miseries of Europe. He stands alone, 
like a beacon ui)on a waste, or a rock in the broad ocean. His 
sceptre was the bow of Ulysses, which could not be drawn by 
any weaker hand. In the Dark Ages of European history the 
reign of Charlemagne affords a solitary resting-place between 
two long periods of turbulence and ignominy, deriving the ad- 
vantages of contrast both from that of the preceding dynasty 
and of a posterity for whom he had formed an empire which 
they were unworthy and unequal to maintain. 

§ 8. Louis THE Debonaik (a.d. 814-840). — Under this 
])rince, called by the Italians the Pious, and by the Erench the 
l)el)onair, or good-natured, ^° the mighty structure of his 
father's power began rapidly to decay. I do not know that 
Louis deserves so much contempt as he has undergone; but 
historians have in general more indulgence for splendid crimes 
than for the weaknesses of virtue. There was no defect in 
Louis's understanding or courage ; he was accomplished in 
martial exercises, and in all the learning which an education, 
excellent for that age, could supply. No one was ever more 
anxious to reform the abuses of administration ; and whoever 
compares his capitularies with those of Charlemagne will per- 
ceive that, as a legislator, he was even superior to his father. 
The fault lay entirely in his heart ; and this fault was nothing 
but a temper too soft and a conscience too strict. It is not 
wonderful that the empire should have been speedily dissolved; 
a succession of such men as Charles Martel, Pepin, and Char- 
lemagne could alone have preserved its integrity ; but the mis- 
fortunes of Louis and his people were immediately owing to 
the following errors of his conduct. 

Soon after his accession Louis thought fit to associate his 
eldest son, Lothaire, to the empire, and to confer the provinces 
of Bavaria and Aquitaine, as subordinate kingdoms, upon the 
two younger, Louis and Pepin, a.d. 817. The step was, in 
appearance, conformable to his father's policy, who had acted 

i" These names meant the same tliinj;. Piiin IkuI. even in good Latin, the sense of 
mitis, meek, forbeariug, or what tlie French call debonnaire. 



Fkance. LOUIS THE DEUONAIII. 11 

towards liimself in a similar manner. But such measures are 
not subject to general rules, and exact a careful regard to 
characters and circumstances. The principle, however, which 
regulated this division was learned from Charlemagne, and 
could alone, if strictly pursued, have given unity and perma- 
nence to the empire. The elder brother was to preserve his 
superiority over the others, so that they should neither make 
peace nor war, nor even give answer to ambassadors, without 
his consent. Upon the death of either no further partition 
was to be made ; but whichever of his children might become 
the popular choice was to inherit the whole kingdom, under 
the same superiority of the head of the family. This compact 
was, from the beginning, disliked 'by the younger brothers; 
and an event upon which Louis does not seem to have calcu- 
lated soon disgusted his colleague, Lothaire. Judith of Bavaria, 
the emperor's second wife, an ambitious woman, bore him a 
son, by name Charles, wlioni both parents were naturally anx- 
ious to place on an equal footing with his brothers. But this 
could only be done at the expense of Lothaire, who was ill 
disposed to see his enijjire still furtlier dismembered for this 
child of a second bed. Louis i)assed bis life in a struggle with 
three undutiful sons, who abused his paternal kindness by 
constant rebellions. 

These were rendered more formidable by the concurrence of 
a different class of enemies, whom it had been another error of 
the emperor to provoke. Cliarlemagne had assumed a thorough 
control and supremacy over the clergy ; and his son was per- 
haps still more vigilant in chastising their irregularities, and 
reforming their rules of discipline. But to this, which they 
had been compelled to bear at the hands of the first, it was 
not equally easy for the second to obtain their submission. 
Louis, therefore, drew on himself the inveterate enmity of 
men who united with the turbulence of martial nobles a skill 
in managing those engines of offence which were peculiar to 
their order, and to which the implicit devotion of his cliarac- 
ter laid him very open. Yet, after many vicissitudes of 
fortune, and many days of ignominy, his wishes were event- 
ually accomplished. 

§ 9. Upon the death of Louis the Debonair, his youngest 
son, Charles, surnamed the Bald, obtained most part of France, 
while Germany fell to the share of Louis, and the rest of the 
imperial dominions, with the title, to the eldest, Lothaire. 
This partition was the result of a sanguinary, though short, 
contest ; and it gave a fatal blow to the Empire of the Franks. 



12 



SUCCESSORS TO LOUIS. 



Chap. I. Part I. 



For the treaty of Verdun in 843 abrogated the sovereignty 
tliat had been attached to the eldest brother and to the imperial 
name in former partitions : each held his respective kingdom 
as an independent right. Tliis is tlie epoch of a final separa- 
tion between the French and German members of the empire. 
Its millenary was celebrated by some of the latter nation in 
1843.11 

SUCCESSORS OF LOUIS THE DEBONAIR. 

Louis the Debonair. 

(814-840). 

I 



Lothaire, 
emperor 
(ob. 855). 



Louis II., 
emperor 
(ob. 875). 



Lothaire, 


Charles, 


li. of 


k. of 


Lorraine 


Burgundy 


(ob. 86'.t). 


and 




Provence 




(ob. 863). 


1 
Louis III. 


Carloman 


(ob. 882). 


(ob. 884). 



I 

Pepin 
(ob. 838). 



Pepin II., 

k. of 
Aquitaine. 



Louis the Charles the 

German Bald, 

(ob. 876). k. of France 

I (ob. 877). 



Charles 
the Fat, 
k. and 
emjjeror 
(ob. 88S) . 



Louis 
le Begue 
(ob. 879). 



Charles the Simple 
(ob. D-Z<J). 

I 

Louis IV. 

(d'Outremer) 

(ob. 9.54). 

I 



Lothaire 
(ob. 986). 

I 
Louis V. 
(ob. 987). 



Charles, 
d. of I^orraine 

(ob. 992). 



The subsequent partitions made among the children of these 
brothers are of too rapid succession to be here related. In 
about forty years the empire was nearly reunited under Charles 
the Fat, son of Louis of Germany ; but his short and inglorious 
reign ended in his deposition. From this time the possession 
of Italy was contested among her native princes ; Germany 
fell at first to an illegitimate descendant of Charlemagne, and 
in a short time was entirel}^ lost by his family; two kingdoms, 

Ji In the division made by the treaty of Verdun, the kingdom of France, wliich 
fell to Charles the Bald, had for its eastern boundary the Jleuse, the Saone, and the 
Rhone ; which, nevertheless, can only be understood of the Upper Rleuse, since 
Brabant was certainly not comprised in it. Lothaire, the elder brother, besides 
Italy, had a kingdom called Lorrain, from his name (fyOtharingin), extending from 
the mouth of the Rhine to Provence, bounded by that river on one frontier, by 
France on the other. Louis took all beyond the Rhine, and was usually styled the 
Germanic. 



Fjjanck. the CAKLOVINGIAN TEltlOD. 13 

afterwards united, were formed by usurpers out of what was 
then called Burgundy, and comprised the provinces between 
the Rhone and the Alps, with Franche Comte and great ])art 
of Switzerland.^^ In France the Carlovingian kings continued 
for another century ; but their line was interrupted two or 
three times by the election or usurpation of a powerful family, 
the counts of l*aris and Orleans, who endetl, like the old mayors 
of the palace, in dis})ersing the phantoms of royalty they had 
professed to serve. Hugh Capet, the representative of this 
House, upon the death of Louis V., placed himself upon the 
throne ; thus founding the third and most permanent race of 
French sovereigns. Before this happened, the descendants of 
Charlemagne had sunk into insigniticance, and retained little 
more of France than the city of Laon. The rest of the king- 
dom had been seized l)y the powerful nobles, who, with the 
nonunal fidelity of the feudal system, maintained its practical 
inde])endence and rebellious spirit. 

§ 10. The second period of Carlovingian history, or that 
which elapsed from the reign of Charles the Bald to the ac- 
cession of Hugh Capet, must be reckoned the transitional 
state, through scenes of barbarous anarchy, from the artificial 
scheme devised by Charlemagne, in which the Roman and 
German elements of civil policy were rather in conflict than 
in union, to a new state of society — the feudal, which, though 
pregnant itself with great evil, was the means both of preserv- 
ing the frame of Euro})ean {tolicy from disintegration, and of 
elaborating the moral and constitutional principles upon which 
it afterwards rested. 

This period exhibits, upon the whole, a failure of the grand 
endeavor made by Charlemagne for the regeneration of his 
empire. This proceeded very much from the common chances 
of hereditary succession, especially when not counterbalanced 
by established powers independent of it. Three of his name, 
Charles the ]>ald, the Fat, and the Simple, had time to pull down 
what the great legislator and conqueror had erected. Encour- 
aged by their pusillanimity and weakness, the nobility strove 
to revive the spirit of the seventh century. They entered 
into a coalition with the bishops, though Charles the Bald had 
often sheltered himself behind the crosier; and they com- 
pelled his son, Louis the Stammerer, not only to confirm their 
own privileges and those of the Church, but to style himself 
"King, by the grace of God and election of the people;" 
which, indeed, according to the established constitution, was 

'2 See Note VIII., " On the kingdom of Burgundy." 



14 CALAMITOUS STATE OF THE EMPIRE. Chap. I. Taut I. 

no more than truth, since the absolute right to succession was 
only in the family. The inability of the crown to protect its 
subjects from their invaders rendered this assumption of aris- 
tocratic independence absolutely necessary. In this age of 
agony, Sismondi well says, the nation began to revive ; new 
social bodies sprung from the carcass of the great empire. 
France, so defenceless under the Bald and the Fat Charleses, 
bristled with castles before 930. She renewed the fable of 
Deucalion ; she sowed stones, and armed men rose out of them. 
The lords surrounded themselves with vassals ; and had not 
the Norman incursions ceased before, they would have met 
with a much more determined resistance than in the preceding 
century. ^^ 

The tlieory propounded by Thierry, and accepted by many 
French writers, to elucidate the Carlovingian period, requires 
a brief notice. Thierry maintains that the key to all the revo- 
lutions in two centuries is to be found in the antipatliy of the 
Ivomans, that is, the ancient inhabitants, to the Franks or 
Germans. The latter were represented by the house of Charle- 
magne ; the former by that of Robert the ]>rave, through its 
valiant descendants, Eudes, Robert, and Hugh Capet. But 
though tlie differences of origin and language, so far as they 
existed, might be by no means unimportant in the great revo- 
lution near the close of tlie tenth century, they cannot be 
relied upon as sufficiently explaining its cause. The partisans 
of eitlier family were not exclusively of one blood. The house 
of Capet itself was not of Roman, but probably of Saxon de- 
scent. It is certainly probable that the Neustrian French had 
come to feel a greater S3'mpathy with the house of Capet than 
with a line of kings who rarely visited their country, and whom 
they could not but contemi:)late as in some adverse relation to 
their natural and popular chiefs, lint the national voice was 
not greatly consulted in those ages. It is remarkable that 
several writers of the nineteenth century, however they may 
sometimes place the true condition of the people in a vivid 
light, are constantly relapsing into a democratic theory. They 
do not by any means underrate the oppressed and almost ser- 
vile condition of the peasantry and burgesses, when it is their 
aim to draw a picture of society ; yet iu reasoning on a politi- 
cal revolution, such as the decline and fall of the German 
dynasty, they ascribe to these degraded classes both the will 
and the power to effect it. The proud nationality which 
spurned a foreign line of princes could not be felt by an im- 
poverished and afflicted commonalty. 

13 Sismondi, " Hist, des Fran5ais," iii., 218, 378; iv.,9. 



Fkance. the SCLAVONIANS. 15 

§ 11. These were times of great misery to the people, and 
the worst, perhaps, that Europe has ever known. Even under 
Charlemagne, we have abundant proofs of the calamities which 
the people suffered. The light which shone around him was 
that of a consuming fire. The free proprietors, who had once 
considered themselves as only called upon to resist foreign 
invasion, were harassed by endless expeditions, and dragged 
away to the Baltic Sea, or the banks of the Drave. Many of 
them, as we learn from his Capitularies, became ecclesiastics 
to avoid military conscription. But far worse must have been 
their state under the lax government of succeeding times, 
when the dukes and counts, no longer checked by the vigorovis 
administration of Charlemagne, were at liberty to play the 
tyrants in their several territories, of which they now became 
almost the sovereigns. The poorer land-holders accordingly 
were forced to bow their necks to the yoke; and, either by 
compulsion or through hope of being better protected, sub- 
mitted their independent patrimonies to tlie feudal tenure. 

But evils still more terrible than these political abuses 
were the lot of those nations who had been subject to Charle- 
magne. They, indeed, may appear to ns little better than 
ferocious barbarians ; but they were exposed to the assaults 
of tribes, in comi^arison of whom they must be deemed humane 
and polished. Each frontier of the empire had to dread the 
attack of an enemy. The coasts of Italy were continually 
alarmed by the Saracens of Africa, who i)ossessed themselves 
of Sicily and Sardinia, and became masters of the Mediterra- 
nean Sea. Though the Greek dominions in the south of Italy 
were chiefly exposed to them, they twice insulted and ravaged 
the territory of Rome (a.d. 840-849); nor was there any se- 
curity even in the neighborhood of the maritime Alps, where, 
early in the tenth century, they settled a piratical colony. 

§ 12. Much more formidal)le were the foes by whom Ger- 
many was assailed. Tlie Sclavonians, a widely extended peo- 
ple, whose language is still spoken npon half the surface of 
Europe, had occcupied the countries of Bohemia, Poland, and 
Pannonia,^* on the eastern confines of the empire, and from 
the time of Charlemagne acknowledged its superiority. P>ut 
at the end of the ninth century, a Tartarian tribe, the Hun- 
garians, overspreading that country which since has borne 
their name, and moving forward like a vast wave, brought a 

11 I am sensible of the awkward effect of introducing tliis name from a more an- 
cient fjcograpliy, but it saves a circumloentiou still more awkward. Austria would 
convey an imperfect idea, and the Austrian dominions conld not be named without 
a tremendous anachrouisni. 



16 THE NORMANS. Chap. I. Part I. 

dreadful reverse upon Germany. Their numbers were great, 
their ferocity untamed. They fought witli light cavalry and 
light armor, trusting to their showers of arrows, against whom 
the swords and lances of the European armies could not avail. 
The memory of Attila was renewed in the devastations of 
these savages, who, if they were not his compatriots, re- 
sembled them both in their countenances and customs. All 
Italy, all Germany, and the south of France, felt this scourge; 
till Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great drove them back by 
successive victories within their own limits, where, in a short 
time, they learned peaceful arts, adopted the religion and 
followed the policy of Christendom (a.d. 934-954). 

§ 13. If any enemies could be more destructive than these 
Hungarians, they were the pirates of the north, known ccmu- 
monly by the name of Normans. The love of a predatory li.e 
seems to have attracted adventurers of different nations to 
the Scandinavian seas, from whence tliey infested, not only 
by maritime piracy, but continual invasions, the northern 
coasts both of France and Germany. The causes of their 
sudden appearance are inexplicable, or at least could only be 
sought in the ancient traditions of Scandinavia. For, un- 
doubtedly, tlie coasts of France and England were as little 
protected from depredations under the Merovingian kings, 
and those of the Heptarchy, as in subsequent times. Yet 
only one instance of an attack from this side is recorded, and 
that before the middle of the sixth century, till the age of 
Charlemagne. In 787 the Danes, as we call those northern 
plunderers, began to infest England, which lay most immedi- 
ately open to their incursions. Soon afterwards they ravaged 
the coasts of France. Charlemagne repulsed them by means 
of his fleets ; yet they pillaged a few places during his reign. 
It is said tliat, perceiving on(^ day, from a port in the Mediter- 
ranean, some Norman vessels wliicli had penetrated into that 
sea, he shed tears, in anticipation of the miseries which awaited 
his empire. In Louis's reign their de[)red:itions upon the coast 
were more incessant, but they did not penetrate into the inhuid 
country till that of Charles the Bald. The wars betAveen that 
prince and his family, which exhausted France of her noblest 
blood, the insubordination of the provincial governors, even 
the instigation of some of Charles's enemies, laid all open to 
their inroads. They adopted an uniform plan of warfare both 
in France and England; sailing up navigable rivers in their 
vessels of small burden, and fortifying the islands which they 
occasionally found, they made these intrenchments at once an 



France. THE NORMANS. 17 

asylum for their women and children, a repository for their 
plunder, and a place of retreat from superior force. Alter 
pillaging a town, they retired to these strongholds or to their 
ships ; and it was not till 872 that they ventured to keep pos- 
session of Angers, which, however, they were compelled to 
evacuate. Sixteen years afterwards they laid siege to Paris, 
and committed the most ruinous devastations on the neighbor- 
ing country. As these Normans Avere unchecked by religious 
awe, the rich monasteries, which had stood harmless amidst 
the havoc of Ctu'istian war, were overwhelmed in the storm. 
Perhaps they may have endured some irrecoverable losses of 
ancient learning ; but their complaints are of monuments 
disfigured, bones of saints and kings dispersed, treasures car- 
ried away. St. Denis redeemed its abbot from captivity 
with six hundred and eighty-five pounds of geld. All the 
chief abbeys were stripped about the same time, either by 
the enemy, or for contributions to the public necessity. So 
impoverished was the kingdom, that in 860 Charles the P>ald 
had great difficulty in collecting three thousand pounds of 
silver to subsidize a body of Normans against their country- 
men. The kings of France, too feeble to prevent or repel 
these invaders, had recourse to the palliative of buying peace 
at their hands, or rather precarious armistices, to Avhicli reviv- 
ing thirst of plunder soon put an end. At length Charles 
the Simple, in 918, ceded a great province, which they had 
already partly occupied, jiartly rendered desolate, and which 
has derived from them the name of Normandy. Ignomini- 
ous as this appears, it proved no impolitic step. Polio, the 
Norman chief, with all his subjects, became Christians and 
Frenchmen ; and the kingdom was at once relieved from a 
terrible enemy, and strengthened by a race of hardy colo- 
nists. No measure was so conducive to the revival of France 
from her abasement in the ninth century as the cession of 
Normandy, The Normans had been distinguished by a pecul- 
iar ferocity towards priests ; yet when their conversion to 
Christianity was made the condition of their possessing Nor- 
mandy, they were ready enough to comply, and in another 
generation became among the most devout of the French 
nation. An explanation of the new zeal for Christianity which 
sprung up among the Normans may be found in the ini]ior- 
tant circumstance that, having few Avomen with them, they 
took Avives (they had made AvidoAvs enough) from the native 
inhabitants. These taught their own faith to their children. 
They taught also their oavu language ; and in no other manner 



IS ACCESSION OF HUGH CAPET. Chap. I. Part L 

can we so well account for the rapid extinction of that of 
Scandinavia in that province of France. 

§ 14. The accession of Hugh Capet (a.d. 987) had not the 
immediate effect of restoring the royal authority over France. 
His own very extensive hef was now, indeed, united to the 
crown ; but a few great vassals occupied the remainder of 
the kingdom. Six of these obtained, at a subsequent time, 
the exclusive appellation of peers of France — the Count of 
Flanders, whose fief stretched from the Scheldt to the Somme ; 
the Count of Champagne ; the Duke of Normandy, to Avhom 
F)rittany did homage ; the Duke of Burgundy, on whom the 
Count of Nivernois seems to have depended ; the Duke of 
Aquitaine, wliose territory, though less than the ancient king- 
dom of that name, comprehended Foitou, Limousin, and most 
of Guienne, Avith the feudal superiority over the Angoumois, 
and some other central districts ; and, lastly, the Count of 
Toulouse, Avlio possessed Languedoc, with the small countries 
of Quercy and Kouergue, and the superiority over Auvergue. 
Besides these six, the Duke of Gascony, not long afterwards 
united with Aquitaine, the counts of Anjou, Ponthieu, and 
Vermandois, the Viscount of Bourges, the lords of Bourbon and 
Coucy, with one or two other vassals, held immediately of the 
last Carlovingian kings. This was the aristocracy, of which 
Hugh Capet usurped the direction ; for the suffrage of no 
general assembly gave a sanction to his title. On the death 
of Louis V. he took advantage of tin; absence of Charles, duke 
of Lorraine, who, as the deceased king's uncle, was nearest 
heir, and procured his own consecration at Rheims. At lirst 
he was by no means acknowledged in tlie kingdom; but his 
contest with Charles i)roving successful, the chief vassals 
ultimately gave at least a tacit consent to the usurpation, and 
])ermitted the royal name to descend undisputed upon his 
])()sterity. But this was almost the sole attributi^ of sover- 
eignty which the lirst kings of the third dynasty enjoyed. 

§ 15. For a long period before and after the accession of 
that family, France has, properly speaking, no national his- 
tory. The character or fortune of those who were called its 
kings was little more imi)ortant to tlie majority of the nation 
than those of foreign ])rinc('s. Undoubtedly, the degree of 
influence which they exercised with respect to the vassals of 
the crown varied according to their power and their proximity. 
Over Guienne and Toulouse the hrst four Capets had very 
little axithority ; nor do they seem to liave ever received assist- 
ance from them either in civil or national wars. With prov- 



France. SUCCESSORS OF HUGH CAPET. 19 

inces nearer to their own domains, such as Normandy and 
Planders, they were frequently engaged in alliance or hostility ; 
but each seemed rather to proceed from the policy of inde- 
pendent states than from tlie relation of a sovereign towards 
his subjects. 

It should be remembered that, when the fiefs of I'aris and 
Orleans are said to have been reunited by Hugh Capet to the 

SUCCESSORS OF HUGH CAPKT. 
Hugh Capet, king, 0S7-99G. 

Robert, king, OOG-1031. 

I 



Hugh, crowned in liis father's Heniy I., Robert, Duke of Burgundy, 

lifethne (ob. lu:iO). king, lo:jl-10GO. 

Philip I., king, 1060-noS. 

Louis Vr. (hi Gros), king, llOS-1137. 

I 

Louis Vir. (le Jeune), king, 1137-1180. 

Philip n. (Augustus), king, 1180-1223. 

Louis VIII., king, 1223-1220. 

Louis IX. (St. Louis), Charles, count of Anjou and Provence, 

king, 122G-1270. founder of the Itoyul House of Kaples. 



Philip III. (Ic ITardi), Robert, count of Clermont, 

king, 1270-1285. founder of the House of'liourbon. 

I 

I I 

Philip IV. (le Bel), Charles, count of Valois, 

king, 1285-1314. founder of the liouse of Valois. 
I (See table, J). 43.) 

I \ \ ^1 

Louis X. (le Hntiu), Philip V. (le Long), Cliarles IV. (le I'.cl), Isabella. 

king, 1314-131G. king, 1316-1322. king, 1322-1328. ni. Edward II. of 
I England. 

Jeanne, ni Philip, Edward III. 

king of Na\ arre, of England. 

ob. i:!4'J. 

I 
Charles, 
king of Navarre. 

crown, little more is understood than the feudal superiority 
over the vassals of these provinces. As the kingdom of 
Charlemagne's posterity was split into a number of great iiefs, 
so each of these contained many barons, possessing exclusive 
immunities within their own territories, waging war at their 
pleasure, administering justice to their military tenants and 
other subjects, and free from all control beyond the conditions 



20 LOUIS VI. — LOUIS VIL Chap. L Pakt L 

of the feudal compact. At the accession of Louis YI. in 1108, 
the cities of Paris, Orleans, and Bourges, with the immediately 
adjacent districts, formed the most considerable portion of the 
royal domain. A number of petty barons, with their fortified 
castles, intercepted the communication between these, and 
waged war against the king almost under the walls of his 
capital. It cost Louis a great deal of trouble to reduce the 
lords of Montriiery, and other places Avitliin a few miles of 
Paris. Under this prince, however, who had more activity 
than his predecessors, the royal authority considerably revived. 
•Prom his reign we may date the systematic rivalry of the 
Prench and English monarchies. Hostilities had several times 
occurred between Philip 1. and the two Williams ; but the 
wars that began under Louis YI. lasted, with no long interrup- 
tion, for three centuries and a half, and form, indeed, the 
most leading feature of French history during the Middle 
Ages. Of all the royal vassals the dukes of Normandy were 
the proudest and anost powerful. Though they had submitted 
to do homage, they could not forget that they came in origin- 
ally by force, and that in real strength they Avere fully equal 
to their sovereign. Nor had the con(|uest of England any ten- 
dency to diminish their pretensions. 

§ IC). Louis A^II. ascended the throne (a.d. 1137) Avith 
bett{;r prosjjects than his father. He had married Eleanor, 
heiress of the great duchy of (iuienne. But this union, 
which promised an immense accession of strength to the 
crown, was rendered unhappy by the levities of that princess. 
Reimdiated by Louis, who felt rather as a husband than a 
king, Eleanor immediately married Henry II. of England, 
who, already inheriting Normandy from his mother and An- 
jou from his father, became possessed of more than one-half 
of France, and an overmatch for Louis, even if the great \i\s- 
sals of the crown had been always ready to maintain its su- 
premacy. One might venture, perlia]is, to conjecture that the 
sceptre of Prance would eventually have passed from the 
Capets to the Plantagenets, if the vexatious quarrel with 
Becket at one time, and the successive rebellions fomented by 
Louis at a later period, had not embarrassed the great talents 
and ambitious spirit of Henry. 

§ 17. But the scene quite changed Avhen Philip Augustus, 
son of Louis VII., came upon the stage (a.d. 1180). No 
])rince comparable to him in systematic ambition and military 
enter))rise had reigned in Prance since Charlemagne. From 
his reign the French monaicliy dates the recovery of its lustre. 



Fraitck. PHILIP AUGUSTUS. — LOUIS VIIL 21 

He wrested from the Count of Flanders the Vermandois (that 
uart of Ficardy which borders on the Isle of France and 
Champagne),^* and, subsequently, the county of Artois. But 
the most important conquests of Philip were obtained against 
the kings of England. Even llichard I., with all his prowess, 
lost ground in struggling against an adversary not less active, 
and more politic, than himself. But when John not only took 
possession of his brother's dominions, but confirmed his i;surpa- 
tion by the murder, as Avas very probably surmised, of the 
heir, Philip, artfully taking advantage of the general indigna- 
tion, summnied him as his vassal to the court of his peers. 
John demanded a safe-conduct. Willingly, said Philij) ; let 
him come unmolested. And return ? inquired the English 
envoy. If the judgment of his peers permit him, replied the 
king. By all the saints of France, he exclaimed, when further 
pressed, he shall not return unless acquitted. The Bishop of 
Ely still remonstrated that the Duke of Normandy could not 
come without the King of England ; nor would tlie barons of 
that country permit their sovereign to run the risk of deatli or 
imprisonment. What of that, my lord bishop ? cried I'hili]). 
It is well known that my vassal the Duke of Normandy 
acquired England by force. But if a subject obtains any 
accession of dignity, shall his paramount lord therefore lose 
his rights ? 

John, not appearing at his summons, was declared guilty of 
felony, and his fiefs confiscated. The execution of this sen- 
tence was not intrusted to a dilatory arm. Philip poured his 
troops into Normandy, and took town after town, while the 
King of England, infatuated by his own wickedness and cow- 
ardice, made hardly an attempt at defence. In two years 
Normandy, Maine, and Anjou were irrecoveraby lost. Poitou 
and Guienne resisted longer ; but the conquest of the first 
was completed by Louis VIIL, successor of Philip (a.d. 1223), 
and the subjection of the second seemed drawing near, when 
the arms of Louis were diverted to different but scarcely less 
advantageous objects. 

§ 18. The country of Langnedoc, subject to the counts of 
Toulouse, had been unconnected, beyond any other part of 
France, with the kings of the house of Capet. Louis VII., 
having married his sister to the reigning count, and travelled 
himself through the coiuitry, began to exercise some degree ( f 
authority, chiefly in confirming the rights of ecclesiastical 
bodies, who were vain, perha])s, of this additional sanction to 

1^ The priucipal towns ol'tiie VcniiaudDis are St. QiRiitiu and rtiuiiue. 



22 WAR IN LANGUEDOC. Chap. I. Part I. 

the privileges which they already jDossessed. But the remote- 
ness of their situation, with a difference in language and legal 
usages, still kept the people of this province apart from those 
of the north of France. 

About the middle of the twelfth centurj^, certain religious 
opinions, Avhich it is not easy, nor, for our present purpose, 
material to define, but, upon every supposition, exceedingly ad- 
verse to those of the Church,^^ began to spread over Languedoc. 
Those who imbibed them have borne the name of Albigeois, 
though they were in no degree peculiar to the district of Albi. 
In despite of much preaching and some persecution, these 
errors made a continual progress ; till Innocent III., in 1198, 
despatched commissaries, the seed of the inquisition, with 
ample powers both to investigate and to chastise. Eayrnond 
VI., count of Toulouse, whether inclined towards the innova- 
tors, as was then the theme of reproach, or, as is more probable, 
disgusted Avith the insolent interference of the pope and his 
missionaries, provoked them to pronounce a sentence of ex- 
comniTinication against him. Though this was taken off, he 
was still suspected ; and upon the assassination of one of the 
inquisitors, in which IJaymond had no concern, Innocent pub- 
lished a crusade both against the count and his subjects, calling 
upon the King of France, and the nobility of that kingdom, to 
take up the cross, with all the indulgences usually held out as 
allurements to religious warfare (a.d. 1208). Though Philip 
Avould not interfere, a prodigious number of knights undertook 
this enterprise, led partly by ecclesiastics, and partly by some 
of the first barons in France. It was prosecuted with every 
atrocious barbarity Avhicli superstition, the mother of crimes, 
could inspire. Languedoc, a country, for that age, flourishing 
and civilized, was laid waste by these desolators ; her cities 
burned; her inhabitants swept away by fire and the SAvord. 

The Crusaders Avere commanded by Simon de Montfort, a 
man like Cromwell, whose intrepidity, hypocrisy, and ambi- 
tion marked him for the hero of a holy Avar. The energy of 
such a mind, at the head of an army of enthusiastic Avarriors, 
may Avell account for the successes which then apjieared mii'acu- 
lous. lUit ]\Iontfort Avas cut off before he could realize his 
ultimate object, q^n independent principality ; and Eayrnond 
was able to bequeath the inheritance of his ancestors to his 
son. Eome, hoAvever, Avas not yet appeased ; ui)on some new 
pretence she raised up a still more formidable enemy against 

'" For the real teii(>ts of the T.anjriicdooian scrtarios I refer to tlie hist chapter of tlie 
present work, wlicre tlie subject will be taken up again. 



FuANCE. LOUIS IX. 23 

tlie younger Raymond (a.d. 1222). Louis VIII. suffered him- 
self to be diverted from the cuncjuest of Griiienne, to take the 
cross against the supposed patron of heresy. After a short 
and successful war, Louis, dying prematurely, left the crown 
of France to a sou only twelve years old. l)ut the Count of 
Toulouse was still pursued, till, hopeless of safety in so un- 
e<j^ual a struggle, he concluded a treaty upon very hard terms. 
By this he ceded the greater part of Languedoc (a.d. 1229) ; 
and, giving his daughter in marriage to Alphonso, brother of 
Louis IX., confirmed to them, and to the king in failure of 
their descendants, the reversion of the rest, in exclusion of any 
other children whom he might have. Thus fell the ancient 
house of Toulouse, through one of those strange combinations 
of fortune which thwart tlie natural course of human pros- 
perity, and disappoint the plans of wise policy and beneticent 
government. 

§ v.). The rapid progress of royal power under Philip Au- 
gustus and his son had scarcely given the great vassals time 
to reflect ujjon the change which it produced in their situa- 
tion. The crown, with which some might singly have meas- 
ured their forces, was now an equipoise to their united weight. 
The minority of Louis IX. (a.d. 1226), guided only by his 
mother, the regent, Blanche of Castile, seemed to offer a favora- 
ble opportunity for recovering tlieir former situation. They 
broke out into open rebellion ; but the address of Blanche de- 
tached some from the league, and her firmness subdued the 
rest. For the first fifteen years of Louis's reign, the struggle 
was frequently renewed ; till repeated humiliations convinced 
the refra(^tory that the throne was no longer to be shaken. 

But Louis IX. had methods of pireserving his ascendency 
very different from military prowess. That excellent prince 
was perhai)s the most eminent pattern of unswerving probity 
and Christian strictness of conscience that ever held the scei)- 
tre in any country. There is a peculiar beauty in the reign 
of St. Louis, because it shows the inestimable benefit which a 
virtuous king may confer on his people, witliout possessing 
any distinguished genius. For nearly half a century that he 
governed France there is not the smallest want of moderation 
or disinterestedness in his actions; and yet he raised the in- 
fluence of the monarchy to a much higher point than the most 
ambitious of his pjredecessors. To the surprise of his own 
and later times, he restored great part of his conquests to 
Henry III., whom he might naturally hope to have expelled 
from France (a.d. 1259). It would indeed have been a tedious 



24 LOUIS IX. —ins CHARACTER. Chap. I. Paut I. 

work to conquer GuieniiP, which was full of strong places ; 
and the subjugation of such a province might have alarmed 
the other vassals of his crown. But it is the privilege only of 
virtuous minds to perceive that wisdom resides in moderate 
counsels : no sagacity ever taught a selfish and ambitious 
sovereign to forego the sweetness of immediate power. An 
ordinary king, in the circumstances of the French monarchy, 
would have fomented, or, at least, have rejoiced in, the dis- 
sensions which broke out among the principal vassals ; Louis 
constantly employed himself to reconcile them. In this, too, 
his benevolence had all the effects of far-sighted policy. It 
had been the practice of his last three predecessors to inter- 
pose their mediation in behalf of the less powerful classes, the 
clergy, the inferior nobility, and the inhabitants of chartered 
towns. Thus the supremacy of the crown became a familiar 
idea ; but tlie 2:)erfect integrity of St. Louis wore away all dis- 
trust, and accustomed even the most jealous feudatories to 
look u]wn him as their judge and legislator. And as the royal 
authority was liitherto shown only in its most amiable prerog- 
atives, the dispensation of favor and the redress of wrong, few 
were watchful enough to remark the transition of the French 
constitution from a feudal league to an absolute monarchy. 

It was perhaps fortunate for the display of St. Louis's vir- 
tues that the throne liad already been strengthened by the less 
innocent exertions of riiilip Augustus and Louis VIIL A 
century earlier his mild and scrupulous character, unsustained 
by great actual power, might not have inspired sutticient awe. 
But the crown was now grown so formidable, and Louis was 
so eminent for his firmness and bravery, qualities without which 
every other virtue would have been ineffectual, that no one 
thought it safe to run wantonly into rebellion, while his disin- 
terested administration gave no one a pretext for it. Hence 
the latter part of his reign was altogether tranquil, and em- 
ployed in watching over the public peace and the security of 
travellers ; administering justice personally, or by the best 
counsellors ; and compiling that code of feudal customs called 
the Establishments of St. Louis, which is the first monument 
of legislation after the accession of the house of Capet. Not 
satisfied with the justice of his own conduct, Louis aimed at 
that act of virtue which is rarely practised by private men, 
and had perhaps no example among kings — restitution. Com- 
missaries were appointed to inquire what possessions had been 
unjustly annexed to the royal domain during the last two 
reigns. These were restored to the proprietors, or, where 



FitANCE. THE CRUSADES. 25 

length of time liad made it difficult to ascertain the claimant, 
their value was distributed among the poor. 

The -princii^al weakness of this king, which almost effaced 
all the good effects of his virtues, was superstition. No man 
was ever more impressed than St. Louis with a belief in the 
duty of exterminating all enemies to his own faith. With 
these he thought no layman ought to risk himself in the peril- 
ous ways of reasoning, but to make answer with his sword as 
stoutly as a strong arm and a fiery zeal could carry that argu- 
ment. Though, fortunately for his fame, the persecution 
against the Albigeois, which had been the disgrace of his 
father's short reign, was at an end before he reached manhood, 
he suffered a hypocritical monk to establish a tribunal at Paris 
for the supj)ression of heresy, where many innocent persons 
suffered death. But no events in his life were more memorable 
than his two crusades, which lead us to look back on the 
nature and circumstances of those most singular phenomena 
in European history. Though the crusades involved all the 
western nations of Europe, without belonging particularly to 
any one, yet, as France was more distinguished than the rest 
in most of those enterprises, I shall introduce the subject as a 
sort of digression from the main course of French history. 

§ 20. Even before the violation of Palestine by the Saracen 
arms it had been a prevailing custom among the Christians of 
Europe to visit those scenes rendered interesting by religion, 
partly through delight in tlie effects of local association, partly 
in obedience to the prejudices or commands of superstition. 
These pilgrimages became more frequent in later times, in 
spite, ])erhaps in consequence, of the danger and hardships 
which attended them. For a while the Mohammedan posses- 
sors of Jerusalem permitted, or even encouraged, a devotion 
which they found lucrative ; but this was interrupted when- 
ever the ferocious insolence with which they regarded all infi- 
dels got the better of their rapacity. During the eleventh 
century, when, from increasing superstition, and some partic- 
ular fancies, the pilgrims were more numerous than ever, a 
change took place in the government of Palestine, which was 
overrun by the Turkish hordes from the North. These bar- 
barians treated the visitors of Jerusalem with still greater 
contumely, mingling with their Mohammedan bigotry a con- 
sciousness of strength and courage, and a scorn of the Chris- 
tians, whom they knew only by the debased natives of Greece 
and Syria, or by these humble and defenceless palmers. AMien 
such insults became known throughout Europe, they excited a 



26 THE CRUSADES. Chap. I. Part L 

keen sensation of resentment among nations equally courageous 
and devout, which, though wanting as ygt any definite means 
of satisfying itself, was ripe for whatever favorable conjunc- 
ture might arise. 

Twenty years before the first crusade Gregory VII. had 
projected the scheme of embodying Europe in arms against 
Asia — a scheme worthy of his daring mind, and which, per- 
haps, was never forgotten by Urban II., who in everything 
loved to imitate his great predecessor. This design of Gregory 
was founded upon the supplication of the Greek emperor 
Michael, which was renewed by Alexius Comnenus to Urban 
with increased importunity. The Turks had now taken Nice, 
and threatened, from the opposite shore, the very walls of 
Constantinople. Every one knows whose hand held the torch 
to that inilammable mass of enthusiasm that pervaded Europe; 
the hermit of Picardy, who, roused by witnessed wrongs and 
imagined visions, journeyed from land to land, the apostle of 
a holy war. The preaching of Peter was powerfully seconded 
by Urban (a.d. 1095). In the councils of Piacenza and of 
Clermont the deliverance of Jerusalem was eloquently recom- 
mended and exultingly undertaken. " It is the will of God ! " 
was the tumultuous cry that broke from the heart and lips of 
the assembly at Clermont ; and these words afford at once the 
most obvious and most certain explanation of the leading 
principle of the Crusades. 

Every means was used to excite an epidemical frenzy ; the 
remission of penance, the dispensation from those practices of 
self-denial which superstition imposed or suspended at pleas- 
ure, the absolution of all sins, and the assurance of eternal 
felicity. None doubted that such as perished in the war re- 
ceived immediately the reward of martyrdom. False miracles 
and fanatical prophecies, which were never so frequent, 
wrouglit up the enthusiasm to a still higher pitch. And these 
devotional feelings, which are usually thwarted and balanced 
by other passions, fell in with every motive that could influence 
the men of that time ; with curiosity, restlessness, the love of 
license, thirst for war, emulation, ambition. Of the princes 
who assumed the cross, some probably from the beginning 
speculated upon forming independent establishments in the 
East. In later periods the temporal benefits of undertaking a 
crusade undoubtedly blended themselves with less selfish con- 
siderations. Men resorted to Palestine, as in modern times 
they have done to the colonies, in order to redeem their fame 
or repair their fortune. Thus Gui de Lusignan, after flying 



France. THE CRUSADES. 27 

from France for murder, was ultimately raised to the throne 
of Jerusalem. To the more vulgar class were held out induce- 
ments which, though absorbed in the overruling fanaticism of 
the first crusade, might be exceedingly efficacious when it 
began rather to flag. During the time that a Crusader bore 
the cross he was free from suit for his debts, and the interest 
of them was entirely abolished; he was exempted, in some 
instances at least, from taxes, and placed under the protection 
of the Church, so that he could not be impleaded in any civil 
court, except on criminal charges, or disputes relating to land. 

None of the sovereigns of Europe took a part in the First 
Crusade ; but many of their chief vassals, great part of the 
inferior nobility, and a countless multitude of the common 
people. Numbers of women and children swelled the crowd ; 
it appeared a sort of sacrilege to repel any one from a work 
which Avas considered as the manifest design of Providence. 
But if it were lawful to interpret the will of Providence by 
events, few undertakings have been more branded by its 
disajiprobation than the Crusades. So many crimes and so 
much misery have seldom been accumulated in so short a 
space as in the three years of the first expedition. We 
should be warranted by contemporary writers in stating the 
loss of the Christians alone during this period at nearly a 
million ; but at the least computation it must have exceeded 
half that number. To engage in the crusade, and to perish 
in it, were almost synonymous. Few of those myriads who 
were mustered in the plains of Nice returned to gladden 
their friends in Europe with the story of their triumph at 
Jerusalem. Besieging alternately, and besieged in Antioch, 
they drained to the lees the cup of misery : three hundred 
thousand sat down before that ])lace ; next year there re- 
mained but a sixth j^art to pursue the enterprise. But their 
losses were least in the field of battle ; the intrinsic superi- 
ority of European prowess was constantly displayed ; the 
angel of Asia, to apply the bold language of our poet, high 
and unmatchable, where her rival was not, became a fear ; 
and the Christian lances bore all before them in their shock 
from Nice to Antioch, Edessa, and Jerusalem (a.d. 1099)." 

The conquests obtained at such a price by the first crusade 

1? The work of Muilly, entitled L'Esprit des Croisades, is deserving of considerable 
praise for its diligence and impartiality. It carries the history, however, no farther 
than the first expedition. Gibbon's two cliapters on the Crusades, though not with- 
out inaccuracies, are a brilliant portion of his great work. Several new documents 
have been collected by the indvistry of tlie modern historians of the Crusades, Michaud 
and Wilken. The original writers are chiefly collected iu two folio volumes, entitled 
Gesta l>ci per Francos, Hanover, 1011. 



28 THE CRUSADES. Chap. I. Part I. 

were cliiefly comprised in the maritime parts of Syria. Except 
the state of Edessa beyond the Enphrates," which, in its Lest 
days, extended over great part of Mesopotamia, the Latin 
possessions never reached mure than a few leagues from tlie 
sea. AVithin the barrier of Mount Libanus their arms might 
be feared, but their power was never establislied ; and the 
pro})het was still invoked in the mosques of Aleppo and 
Damascus. The principality of Antiocli to the north, the 
kingdom of Jerusalem with its feudal dependencies of Tri])oli 
and Tiberius to the south, were assigned, the one to Boemond, 
a brother of Kobert Guiscard, count of Apulia, the other to 
Godfrey of Boulogne, Avhose extraordinary merit had justly 
raised him to a degree of influence with the chief Crusaders 
that lias been sometimes confounded Avith a legitimate author- 
ity, lu the course of a few years Tyre, Ascalon, and the 
other cities upon the sea-coast, were subjected by the successors 
of Godfrey on the throne of Jerusalem. But as their enemies 
had been stunned, not killed, by the AVestern storm, the Latins 
were constantly molested by the Mohammedans of Egy})t and 
Syria. They Avere expt)sed as the outposts of Christendom, 
with no respite and few resour(;es. 

A Second Crusade (a.j). 1147), in Avhich the Emperor Con- 
rad III. and Louis VII. of France were engaged, each with 
seventy thousand caA'^alry, nrade scarce any diversion ; and that 
vast army Avasted aAvay in the passage of Natolia. 

The decline of the Christian establishments in the East is 
ascribed by AYilliam of Tyre to the extreme vicioiisness of 
their manners, to the adoption of European arms by the Ori- 
entals, and to the union of the Mohammedan principalities 
under a single chief. Witlioiit denying the operation of these 
causes, and especially the last, it is easy to perceive one more 
radical than all the three — the inadequacy of their means of 
self-defence. The kingdom of Jerusalem Avas guarded only, 
exclusive of European volunteers, by the feudal service of 8()0 
knights, attended each by four archers on horseback, by a 
militia of 5,075 burghers, and by a conscription, in great 
exigencies, of the remaining population. William of Tyre 
mentions an army of 1,300 horse and 15,000 foot, as the greatest 
Avhicli had ever been collected, and predicts the utmost success 
from it, if Avisely conducted. This was a little before the 
irruption of Saladin. Nothing can more strikingly evince the 

" Edessa was a little Christian principality, surrounded by, and tributary to, the 
Turks. The inhabitants invited I5:ildwin, on liis pros:ress in the first crusade, and lie 
niaile no fcreat S(ru])le of supplanting tlie reigning prince, who indeed is represented 
as a tyrant and usurper. 



France. THE CRUSADES. 29 

ascendency of Europe than the resistance of these Frankish 
acquisitions in Syria during nearly two hundred years. Sev- 
eral of their victories over the Moslems were obtained against 
such disparity of numbers, that they may be compared with 
whatever is most illustrious in history or romance. These, 
perhaps, were less due to the descendants of the first Cru- 
saders, settled in the Holy Land, than to those volunteers 
from Europe whom martial ardor and religious zeal impelled 
to the service. It was the penance commonly imposed upon 
men of rank for the most heinous crimes, to serve a number 
of years under the banner of the cross. Thus a perpetual 
supi)ly of warriors was poured in from Europe ; and in this 
sense the Crusades may be said to have lasted without inter- 
mission during the whole period of the Latin settlements. Of 
these defenders the most renowned were the military orders 
of the Knights of the TemyJe and of the Hospital of St. John; 
instituted, the one in 1124, the other in 111<S, for the sole 
purpose of protecting the Holy Land. The Teutonic order, 
established in 1190, when the kingdom of Jerusalem was fall- 
ing, soon diverted its schemes of holy warfare to a very dif- 
ferent quarter of the world. Large estates, as well in I'alestine 
as throughout Europe, enriched the two former institutions ; 
but the pride, rapaciousness, and misconduct of both, especially 
of the Templars, seemed to have balanced the advantages de- 
rived from their valor. At length the famous Saladin, usurping 
the throne of a feeble dynasty which had reigned in Egpyt, 
broke in upon the Christians of Jerusalem ; the king and the 
kingdom fell into his hands ; nothing remained but a few 
strong towns upon the sea-coast (a.d. 1187). 

These misfortunes roused once more the princes of Europe, 
and the Third Crusade (a.d. 1189) was undertaken by three 
of her sovereigns, the greatest in personal estimation as well 
as dignity — by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip 
Augustus of France, and our own Richard Coeur de Lion. 
But this, like the preceding enterprise, failed of permanent 
effect ; and those feats of romantic prowess which made the 
name of Richard so famous both in Europe and Asia proved 
only the total inefficacy of all exertions in an attempt so im- 
practicable ; Palestine was never the scene of another crusade. 
One great armament was diverted to the siege of Constanti- 
nople (a.d. 1204) ; and another wasted in fruitless attempts 
upon Egypt (a.d. 1218). The Emperor Frederick II. after- 
wards procured the restoration of Jerusalem by the Saracens ; 
but the Christian princes of Syria were unable to defend it, 



30 THE CRUSADES. Cuap. I. Paut I. 

and their possessions were gradually reduced to the maritime 
towns. Acre, the last of these, was finally taken by storm in 
1291 ; and its ruin closes the history of the Latin dominion 
in Syria, Avhich Europe had already ceased to protect. 

The last two crusades were undertaken by 8t. Louis. In 
the first he was attended by 2,800 knights and 50,000 ordinary 
troops. He landed at Damietta, in Egypt, for that country 
was now deemed the key of the Holy Land, and easily made 
himself master of tlie city (a.d. 1248). But advancing up the 
country, he found natural impediments as well as enemies in 
his way ; the Turks assailed him with Greek fire, an instrument 
of warfare almost as surprising and terrible as gunpowder ; he 
lost his brother, the Count of Artois, with many knights, at 
Massoura, near Cairo ; and began too late a retreat towards 
Damietta. Such calamities now fell upon this devoted army 
as have scarce ever been surpassed ; hunger and want of every 
kind, aggravated by an unsparing pestilence. At length the 
king was made prisoner, and very few of the army escaped the 
Turkish scymitar in battle or captivity. Four hundred thou- 
sand livres were paid as a ransom for Louis. He returned to 
France, and passed nearly twenty years in the exercise of 
those virtues which are his best title to canonization. But the 
fatal illusions of sui:)erstition were still always at his heart ; 
nor did it fail to be painfully observed by his subjects that he 
still kept the cross upon his garment. His last expedition was 
originally designed for Jerusalem. But he had received some 
intimation that the King of Tunis was desirous of embracing 
Christianity. That these inteutions might be carried into 
effect, he sailed out of his Avay to the coast of Africa, and laid 
siege to that city (a.d. 1270). A fever here put an end to 
his life, sacrificed to that ruling passion which never would 
have forsaken him. But he had survived the spirit of the 
Crusades ; the disastrous expedition to Egypt had cured his 
subjects, though not himself, of their folly ; his son, after mak- 
ing terms with Tunis, returned to France ; the Christians were 
suffered to lose what they still retained in the Holy Land ; 
and though many princes in subsequent ages talked loudly of 
renewing the war, the j)romise, if it were ever sincere, was 
never accomplished. 

§ 21. Louis IX. had increased the royal domain by the an- 
nexation of several counties and other less important fiefs; 
but soon after the accession of Philip TIL, surnamed the Bold 
(a.d. 1270), it received a far more considerable augmentation. 
Alfonso, the late king's brother, had been invested with the 



Feance. PHILIP III. — PHILIP IV. 31 

county of Poitou, ceded by Henry III., together with part of 
Auvergne and of Saintonge ; and held also, as has been said 
before, the remains of the great fief of Toulouse, in right of his 
wife Jane, heiress of Raymond VII. Upon his death, and 
that of his countess, which happened about the same time, the 
king entered into possession of all these territories (a.d. 1271). 
This acquisition brought the sovereigns of France into contact 
with new neighbors, the kings of Arragon and the powers of 
Italy. The first great and lasting foreign war which they 
carried on was that of Philip III. and Philip IV. against the 
former kingdom, excited by the insurrection of Sicily. Though 
effecting no change in the boundaries of their dominions, this 
war may be deemed a sort of epoch in the history of France 
and Spain, as well as in that of Italy, to which it more pecul- 
iarly belongs. 

§ 22. There still remained five great and ancient fiefs of 
the French crown ; Champagne, Guienne, Flanders, Burgundy, 
and Brittany. But Philip IV., usually called the Fair (a.d. 
1285), married the heiress of the first, a little before his 
father's death ; and although he governed that country in her 
name, without pretending to reunite it to the royal domain, it 
was, at least in a political sense, no longer a part of the feudal 
body. With some of his other vassals Philip used more vio- 
lent methods. A parallel might be drawn between this prince 
and Philip Augustus. But while in ambition, violence of 
temper, and unprincipled rapacity, as well as in the success of 
their attempts to establish an absolute authority, they may be 
considered as nearly equal, we may remark this difference, 
that Philip the Fair, who was destitute of military talents, 
gained those ends by dissimulation which his predecessor had 
reached by force. 

The duchy of Guienne, though somewhat abridged of its 
original extent, was still by far the most considerable of the 
French fiefs, even independently of its connection with Eng- 
land. Philip, by dint of perfidy, and by the egregious inca- 
pacity of Edmond, brother of Edward I., contrived to obtain, 
and to keep for several years, the possession of this great 
province. A quarrel among some French and English sailors 
having provoked retaliation, till a sort of piratical war com- 
menced between the two countries, Edward, as Duke of 
Guienne, was summoned into the king's court to answer for 
the trespass of his subjects (a.d. 1292). Upon this he de- 
spatched his brother to settle terms of reconciliation, with 
fuller powers than should have been intrusted to so credulous 



32 PHILIP IV. Chap. I. Part I. 

a negotiator. Philip so outwitted tliis prince, through a ficti- 
tious treaty, as to procure from him the surrender of all the 
fortresses in Guienne. He then threw off the mask, and, 
after again sumnioning Edward to appear, pronounced the 
confiscation of his fief. This business is the greatest blemish 
in the political character of Edward. But his eagerness about 
the acquisition of Scotland rendered him less sensible to the 
danger of a possession in many respects more valuable ; and 
the spirit of resistance among the English nobility, which his 
arbitrary measures had provoked, broke out very opportunely 
for Philip, to thwart every ett'ort for the recovery of Guienne 
by arms. But after repeated suspensions of hostilities a treaty 
was finally concluded, by which Philip restored the province, 
on the agreement of a marriage between his daughter Isabel 
and tlie heir of England. 

To this restitution he was chiefly induced by the ill success 
that attended his arms in Flanders, another of the great fiefs 
which this ambitious monarch had endeavored to confiscate. 
The Flemings made, however, so vigorous a resistance, that 
Philip was nnable to reduce that small country ; and in one 
famous battle at Courtray they discomfited a powerful army 
with that utter loss and ignominy to which the undisciplined 
impetuosity of the French nobles was pre-eminently exposed 
(A.D. 1302). 

Two other acquisitions of Philip the Fair deserve notice; 
that of the counties of Angouleme and La Marche, upon a 
sentence of forfeiture (and, as it seems, a very harsh one) 
passed against the reigning count : and that of the city of 
Lyons, and its adjacent territory, which had not even feudally 
been subject to the croun of France for more than three 
hundred years. 

§ 23. One of the most memorable events in the reign of 
Philip IV. was the condemnation and suppression of the Order 
of the Knights Templars on the charge of systematic blas- 
phemy and impiety, shameless immorality, and deliberate apos- 
tasy from the Christian faith. Their innocence or guilt has 
been the subject of much controversy. The general current 
of popular writers in the eighteenth century was in favor of 
their innocence ; in England it would have been almost para- 
doxical to doubt of it. The rapacious and unprincipled char- 
acter of Philip, the submission of the Pope, Clement V., to 
his will, the apparent incredibility of the charges from their 
monstrousness, the just prejudice against confessions obtained 
by torture and retracted afterwards — the other prejudice, not 



France. SUPPRESSION OP THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. 33 

always so just, but iu the case of those not convicted on fair 
evidence deserving a better name, iu favor of assertions of 
innocence made on the scaffold and at the stake — created, as 
they still preserve, a strong willingness to disbelieve the ac- 
cusations which come so suspiciously before us. The strongest 
case against them is contained in an Essay written by Count 
Hammer Purgstall,^^ in which he endeavors to establish the 
identity of the idolatry ascribed to the Templars with that of 
the ancient Gnostic sects, and especially with those denomi- 
nated Ophites, or worshippers of the serpent ; and to prove 
also that the extreme impurity which forms one of the revolt- 
ing and hardly credible charges adduced by Philip IV. is simi- 
lar in all its details to the practice of the Gnostics. This 
attack is not conducted with all the coolness which bespeaks 
impartiality ; but the evidence is startling enough to make 
refutation apparently difficult. The tirst part of the proof, 
which consists in identifying certain Gnostic idols, or, as some 
suppose, amulets, though it comes much to the same, with the 
description of what are called Baphometic, in the proceedings 
against the Templars, is of itself sufficient to raise a consid- 
erable presumption. We find the word metis continually on 
these images, of which Von Hammer is able to describe 
twenty-four. Baphoinet is a secret word ascribed to the 
Templars. ^"^ But tlie more important evidence is that fur- 
nished by the comparison of sculptures extant on some Gnos- 
tic and Ophitic bowls with those in churches built by the 
Templars. Of these there are many in Germany, and some 
in France. Von Hammer has examined several in the Aus- 
trian dominions, and collected accounts of others. It is a 
striking fact that in some we find, concealed from the com- 
mon observer, images and symbols extremely obscene ; and 
as these, which cannot here be more particularly adverted 
to, betray the depravity of the architects, and cannot be 
explained away, we may not so much hesitate as at first to 
believe that impiety of a strange kind was mingled up with 
this turpitude. The presumptions, of course, from the abso- 
lute identity of many emblems in churches with the Gnostic 
superstiticMis in their worst form, grow stronger and stronger 
by multiplication of instances ; and though coincidence might 

19 " Mysterium Baphometis Revelatum, Sen Fratres Militiae TempH qua Gnostici et 
qnidem Opliiani, Apostasia", Idoloduliae, et Impuritatis convicti per ipsa eoniiii Mon- 
umenta." Published iu tlie sixth volume of the "Mines del'Orient Exploitees." 
Vienna, 1818. 

2" Til is word is generally identified with Mohammed, but Hammer supposes it to 
be " the God who baptizes according to the spirit (8(i</>r) jurJTi6o;); tlie (iod of the 
Gnostics and of the Manichteans." See Martin, " Hist, de France," vol. iv., p. 477. 



34 REIGXS OF CHILDREN OF PHILIP IV. Chap. I. Part I. 

be credible in one, it becomes infinitely improbable in so many. 
One may here be mentioned, though among the slightest re- 
semblances. The Gnostic emblems exhibit a peculiar form of 
cross, T ; and this is common in the churches built by the 
Templars. But the Freemasons, or that society of architects 
to whom we owe so many splendid churches, do not escape M. 
von Hammer's ill opinion better than the Templars. Though 
he conceives them to be of earlier origin, they had drunk at 
the same foul spring of impious and impure Gnosticism. Still, 
this evidence has not been universally received. It was at- 
tempted to be refuted by Kaynouard,"^^ who had been partially 
successful in repelling some of his opponent's arguments, 
though it appears to me that he had left much untouched. "^^ 
It seems that the architectural evidence is the most positive, 
and can only be resisted by disproving its existence, or its 
connection with the Freemasons and Templars. 

§ 24. Philip the Fair left three sons, who successively 
reigned in France : Louis X. (a.d. 1314), surnamed Hutin ; 
Philip v., surnamed the Long ; and Charles IV., surnamed the 
Fair ; with a daughter, Isabel, married to Edward II. of 
England.-^ Louis, the eldest, survived his father little more 
than a year, leaving one daughter and his queen |)regnant. 
The circumstances that ensued require to be accurately stated. 
Louis had possessed, in right of his mother, the kingdom of 
Navarre, with the counties of Champagne and Brie. Upon 
his death, Philip, his next brother, assumed tlie regency both 
of France and Navarre ; and not long afterwards entered into 
a treaty with Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, uncle of the princess 
Jane, Louis's daughter, by which her eventual rights to the 
succession were to be regulated. It was agreed that, in case 
the queen shoiild be delivered of a daughter, these two prin- 
cesses, or the survivor of them, should take the grandmother's 
inlieritance, Navarre and Champagne, on releasing all claim to 
the throne of France. But this was not to take place till their 
age of consent, when, if they should refuse to make such re- 
nunciation, their claim Avas to remain, and right to he done to 
them therein ; but in return, the release made by Philip of 
Navarre and Champagne was to be null. In the mean time, 
he was to hold the government of France, Navarre, and Chani- 

-' " Journal des S.avans " for 1810. 

" H. Martin, who has given at great length the history of the condemnation of the 
Templars (" Hist, dc France," vol. iv., ]ip. 4()7-4'.ir), says — " r>es lumieres rjiie I'etude 
des documents originaux a jetees siir la iiuestioii, scmblent perniettre aujoiird'hui de 
condamner moralenient I'ordre, niais avec de grandes reserves pour les iudividus." 

23 See Genealogical Table, p. 19. 



France. QUESTION OF SALIC LAW. 35 

pagne, receiving homage of vassals in all these countries as 
governor ; saving the right of a male heir to the late king, in 
the event of whose birth the treaty was not to take effect. 

This convention was made on the 17th of July, 1316 ; and 
on the 15th of November the queen brought into the world a 
son, John I. (as some called him), who died in four days. 
The conditional treaty was now become absolute ; in spirit, at 
least, if any cavil might be raised about the expression : and 
Philip was, by his own agreement, precluded from taking any 
other title than that of regent or governor, until the princess 
Jane should attain the age to concur in or disclaim the provis- 
ional contract of her uncle. Instead of this, however, he pro- 
cured himself to be consecrated at Rheims. Upon his return 
to Paris, an assembly composed of prelates, barons, and bur- 
gesses of that city, was convened, who acknowledged him as 
their lawful sovereign, and, if we may believe an historian, 
expressly declared that a woman was incapable of succeeding 
to the crown of France. The Duke of Burgundy, however, 
made a show of supporting his niece's interests, till, tempted 
by the prospect of a marriage with the daughter of Philip, he 
shamefully betrayed her cause, and gave up in her name, for 
an inconsiderable pension, not only her disputed claim to the 
whole monarchy, but her unquestionable right to Navarre and 
Champagne. 

In this contest, every way memorable, but especially on ac- 
count of that which sprung out of it, the exclusion of females 
from the throne of Prance was first publicly discussed. The 
Prench writers almost unanimously concur in asserting that 
such an exclusion was biiilt upon a fundamental maxim of their 
government. No written law, nor even, as far as I know, the 
direct testimony of any ancient writer, has been brought for- 
ward to confirm tliis position. Por as to the text of the Salic 
law, which was frequently quoted, and has indeed given a 
name to this exclusion of females, it can only by a doubtful 
and refined analogy be considered as bearing any relation to 
the succession of the crown. ^* It is certain, nevertheless, that, 
from the time of Clovis, no woman had ever reigned in France ; 

2* The Salic law simply provided that Salic land [i.e., the allodial property of the 
tribe] should not descend to females, and is improperly applied to the law which ex- 
cluded females from the crown. But from the accession of Philip the Long this so- 
called " Salic law has been regarded as an essential constitutional principle in France. 
The advantages of such an enactment are great and obvious. It secured the consolida- 
tion of the royal authority in tlie hands of a line of native jirinces ; it tended to ex- 
clude foreign influence from tlie highest functions and affairs of state; and, by making 
it impossible that the crown of France should ever be acquired by marriage, it cut 
off a dangerous temptation, which, in other countries, has produced destructive con- 
sequeuces." See Martin, vol. iv., p. 536 ; " Student's Hist, of France," p. 190. 



36 CLAIM OF EDWARD III. Chap. I. Pakt I. 

and although not an instance of a sole heii*ess liad. occurred 
before, yet some of the Merovingian kings left daughters, wlio 
might, if not rendered incapable by their sex, have shared with 
their brothers in partitions then commonly made. But, on the 
other hand, these times were gone quite out of memory, and 
France had much in the analogy of her existing usages to rec- 
oncile her to a female reign. The crown resembled a great 
fief; and the great fiefs might universally descend to women. 
Even at the consecration of Philip himself, Maud, countess of 
Artois, held the crown over his head among the other peers. 
And it was scarcely beyond the recollection of persons living 
that Blanche had been legitimate regent of France during the 
minority of St. Louis. 

For these reasons, and much more from the provisional 
treaty concluded between Philip and the Duke of Burgundy, 
it may be fairly inferred that the 8alic law, as it was called, 
was not so fixed a principle at that time as has been contended. 
But however this may be, it received at the accession of Philip 
the Long a sanction which subsequent events more thoroughly 
confirmed. Philip himself leaving only three daughters, his 
brother Charles (a.d. 1322) mounted the throne ; and upon his 
death (a.d. 1328) the rule was so unquestionably established, 
that his only daughter was excluded by the Count of Yalois, 
grandson of Philip the Bold. This prince first took the re- 
gency, the queen-dowager being pregnant, and, ui>on her giving 
birth to a daughter, was crowned king. No competitor or op- 
ponent appeared in France ; but one more formidable than any 
whom France could have produced was awaiting the occasion 
to jH'osecute his imagined right with all the resources of valor 
and genius, and to carry d<>solatioii over that great kingdom 
Avith as little scruple as if he were preferring a suit before a 
civil tribunal. 

§ 25. From the moment of Charles IV.'s death, Edward III. 
of England buoyed himself up witli the notion of his title to 
the crown of France, in right of his mother Isabel, sister to 
the last three kings. We can have no hesitation in condemn- 
ing the -injustice of this pretension. Whether the Salic law 
were or were not valid, no advantage could be gained by Ed- 
ward. Even if he could forget the express or tacit decision of 
all France, there stood in his way Jane, the daughter of Louis 
X., three of Philip the Long, and one of Charles the Fair. 
Aware of this, Edward set up a distinction, that, although 
females were excluded from succession, the same rule did not 
apply to their male issue ; and thus, though his mother Isabel 



France. THE HOUSE OF VALOJS OF FPtA?^CE. 37 

could not herself become Queen of France, she might transmit 
a title to him. But tliis was contrary to the commonest rules 
of inheritance ; and if it could have been regarded at all, Jane 
had a son, afterwards the famous King of IMavarre, who stood 
one degree nearer to the crown than Edward. 

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE HOUSE OF V^ALOIS OP FRANCE. 
Charles, count of Valois, youugcr son of King Philip IIL (See Table, p. 19.) 

Philip VL, king, 1328-1350. 

I 

John (le Bon), king, 1250-1364. 



Charles V 
king, 13 


. (le Sage), 
34-1380. 


1 

Louis, duke of Anjou, 

founder of the 2d royal 

house of Naples. 


1 1 
John, duke Fliiliji, duke 
of Berry. of Burgundy, 
ob. 1404. " 

Jean Sanspeur, 
assassinated at 
Montereau, 1419 


Charles V 


1 
I. (le Bien-ainie 
: Isabella of l?a 


1 
), king, 1380-1422 Louis, duke of Orleans, 
•aria. assassinated at Paris, 1407, 

founder of tlie line of Valois-Orleans. 



III I I 

Louis, John, Cuarlks VII. Isabella Catheiiiie 

ob. 1415. ob. 1416. (le Victorieux), = 1. Bicliard II. of England. =Henrv V. 

king, 1422-1461. 2. Duke of OrK'ans. of England. 

\ 

I I I 

Louis XL, king. 1461-1483. Charles, duke of Berry. Four daughters. 

I I I 

Charles VIII., king, Anne= Jeanne = 

1483-1498. Sire de Beaujeu. Duke of Orleans, 

afterwards Louis XII 

It is asserted in some Prencli authorities that Edward yive- 
ferred a claim to the regency immediately after the decease of 
Charles the Fair, and that the States-General, or at least the 
peers of F^rance, adjudged that dignity to Philip de Vnlois. 
Whether this be true or not, it is clear that he entertained 
projects of recovering his right as early, though his youth and 
the embarrassed circumstances of his government threw in- 
superable obstacles in the way of their execution. He did 
liege homage, therefore, to Phili]:) for Guienne, and for several 
years, while the affairs of Scotland engrossed his attention, 
gave no sign of meditating a more magniticent enterprise. As 
he advanced in manhood, and felt the consciousness of his 
strength, his early designs grew mature, and produced a series 
of the most important and interesting revolutions in the for- 
tunes of France. These will form the subject of the ensuing 
pages. 



38 WAR OF EDWARD III. IN FRANCE. Chap. I. Part II. 



PART II. 

FROM THE ACCESSION OF PHILIP OF VALOIS TO THE INVASION 
OF NAPLES BY CHARLES VIII. 

§ 1. War of Edward III. in France. § 2. Causes of his Success. § 3. Civil disturb- 
ances of France. § 4. Peace of Bretigni. § 5. Charles V. Renewal of tlie War. 
§6. Charles VI. His Minority and Insanity. §7. Civil dissensions of the Parties 
of Orleans and Burgundy. Assassination of Ijoth these Princes. § 8. Intrigues 
of their Parties with England under Henry IV. Henry V. invades Fraiicc. 
§ 9. Treaty of Troyes. § 10. State of France in the tirst Years of Charles VII. 
§ 11. Progress and subsequent Decline of the English Arms. § 1'2. Tlu ir Expul- 
sion from France. § 1.3. Change in the Political Constitution. § H. Louis .\l. 
His Cliaracter. Leagues formed against him. § 15. C'harles Duke of Burgundy. 
His Prosperity and Fall. •!} 10. Louis obtains possession of Burgundy. § 17. His 
death. § IS. Charles VIll. Acquisition of Brittany. 

§ 1. jSTo war had broken out in Europe, since the fall of the 
Roman Empire, so memorable as that of Edward III. and his 
successors against France, whether we consider its duration, 
its object, or the magnitude and variety of its events. It was 
a struggle of 120 years, interrupted but once by a regular 
pacification, where the most ancient and extensive dominion 
in the civilized world was the prize, twice lost and twice 
recovered in the conflict, while individual courage was wrought 
up to that high pitch which it can seldom display since the 
regularity of modern tactics has chastised its enthusiasm and 
levelled its distinctions. There can be no occasion to dwell 
upon the events of this war, which are familiar to almost every 
reader : it is rather my aim to develop and arrange those cir- 
cumstances which, when rightly understood, give the clew to 
its various changes of fortune. 

§ 2. France was, even in the fourteenth century, a kingdom 
of such extent and com]^actness of figure, such population and 
resources, and filled with so spirited a nobility, that the very 
idea of subjugating it by a foreign force must have seemed the 
most extravagant dream of ambition. Yet, in the course of 
about twenty years of war, this mighty nation was reduced to 
the lowest state of exhaustion, and dismembered of consider- 
able provinces by an ignominious peace. AVhat was the com- 
bination of political causes which brought about so strange a 
revolution, and, though not realizing Edward's hopes to their 



FuANCE. WAR OF EDWARD III. IN FRANCE. 39 

extent, redeemed them from the imputation of rashness in the 
judgment of Ids own and succeeding ages ? 

Tlie first advantage Avhich Edward 111. possessed in this 
contest was derived from the splendor of liis personal character 
and from the still more eminent virtues of his son. Besides 
prudence and military skill, these great princes were endowed 
with qualities peculiarly fitted for the times in which they 
lived. Chivalry was then in its zenith ; and in all the virtues 
which adorned the knightly character, in courtesy, munificence, 
gallantry, in all delicate and magnanimous feelings, none were 
so conspicuous as Edward III. and the Black Prince. As later 
princes have boasted of being the best gentlemen, they might 
claim to be the prowest kniglits in Europe — a character not 
quite dissimilar, yet of more high pretension. Their court 
was, as it were, the sun of tliat system which embraced the 
valor and nobility of the Christian world ; and the respect 
which was felt for their excellences, while it drew many to 
their side, mitigated in all the rancor and ferociousness of 
hostility. This war was like a great tournament, where the 
combatants fought indeed a outra'nce, but with all the courtesy 
and fair play of such an entertainment, and almost as much 
for the honor of their ladies. In the school of the Edwards 
were formed men not inferior in any nobleness of dis])Osition 
to their masters — Manni and the Captal de Buch, Knollys 
and Calverley, Chandos and Lancaster. On the French side, 
especially after Du Guesclin came on the stage, these had 
rivals almost equally deserving of renown. If we could for- 
get, what never should be forgotten, the wretchedness and 
devastation that fell upon a great kingdom, too dear a price 
for the display of any heroism, we might count these English 
wars in France among the brightest periods in history. 

Philip of Valois, and John his son, showed but poorly in 
comparison with their illustrious enemies. Yet they both had 
considerable virtues ; they were brave, just, liberal ; and the 
latter, in particular, of unshaken fidelity to his word. But 
neither was beloved by his subjects ; the misgovernment and 
extortion of their predecessors during half a century had alien- 
ated the public mind, and rendered their own taxes and 
debasement of the coin intolerable. Philip was made by mis- 
fortune, John by nature, suspicious and austere ; and although 
their most violent acts seem never to have wanted absolute 
justice, yet they were so ill conducted, and of so arbitrary a 
complexion, that they greatly impaired the reputation, as well 
as interests, of these mouarchs. 



40 CIVIL DISTUKBANCES OF FKANCE. Cuap. I. Pakt II, 

Next to tlie personal qualities of the King of England, his 
resources in tliis war must be taken into tlie account. It was 
after long hesitation that he assumed the title and arms of 
France, from wliich, uidess ujjon the best terms, he could not 
recede without loss of honor. In the meantime he streiigtli- 
ened himself by alliances with the emperor, with the cities of 
Flanders, and witli most of the princes in the IS etlierlands and 
on the lihine. Yet I do not know that he profited by these 
conventions, since he met with no success till the scene of the 
war was changed from the Flemish frontier to Kormandy and 
Poitou. The troops of Hainault alone were constantly distin- 
guished in his service. 

But his intrinsic strength was at home. England had been 
growing in riches since the wise government of his grandfather, 
Edward I., and through the market opened for her wool with 
the manufacturing towns of Flanders. She was tranquil 
within ; and her nortliern enemy, the Scotch, had been defeated 
and quelled. The Parliament, after some slight precautions 
against a very ])robable effect of Edward's conquest of France, 
the reduction of their own island into a province, entered, as 
warmly as ini])rovidently, into his quarrel. The people made 
it their own, and grew so intoxicated Avith the victories of this 
war, that for some centuries the injustice and folly of the 
enterprise do not seem to have struck the gravest of our 
countrymen. 

There is, indeed, am])lc room for national exultation at the 
names of Crecy, Poitiers, and Azincourt. So great was tlie 
disparity of numbers upon those famous days, that we cannot, 
with the French historians, attribute the discomfiture of their 
hosts merely to mistaken tactics and too impetuous valor. 
Tliey yielded rather to that intrepid steadiness in danger which 
had already become the characteristic of our English soldiers, 
and which, during five centuries, has insured their superiority, 
Avhenever ignorance or infatuation has not led them into tlie 
field. But these victories, and the qualities that secured them, 
must chiefly be ascribed to the freedom of our constitution, 
and to the superior condition of her people. Not the nobility 
of England, not the feudal tenants, won the battles of Crecy 
and Poitiers ; for these were fully matched in the ranks of 
France ; but the yeomen, who drew the bow with strong and 
steady arms, accustomed to use it in their native fields, and 
rendered fearless by personal competence and civil freedom. 
It is well known that each of the three great victories was due 
to our archers, who were chiefly of the middle class, and 



Fjjance, successes OF EDWARD III. 41 

attached, according to the system of that age, to the kiiiglits 
and squires who fought in heavy armor with the lance. Even 
at tlae battle of .Poitiers, of which our country seems to have 
the least riglit to boast, since the greater part of the Black 
Prince's small army was composed of Gascons, the merit of 
the English bowmen is strongly attested by Froissart. 

§ 3. Yet the glorious termination to which Edward was 
enabled, at least for a time, to bring the contest, was rather 
the work of fortune than of valor and prudence. Until the 
battle of Poitiers he had made no progress towards the con- 
quest of France. That country was too vast, and his army 
too small, for such a revolution. The victory of Crecy gave 
him nothing but Calais, a post of considerable im])ortance in 
war and peace, but rather ada])ted to annoy than to subjugate 
the kingdom. Put at Poitiers he obtained the greatest of 
prizes, by taking jirisoner the king of France. Not only the 
love of Freedom tem})ted that prince to ransom himself by the 
utmost sacrifices, but his ca])tivity left France defenceless, and 
seemed to annihilate the monarchy itself. The government 
was already odious ; a spirit was awakened in the people which 
might seem hardly to belong to the fourteenth century ; and the 
convulsions of our own time are sometimes strongly paralleled 
by those which succeeded the battle of Poitiers. Already 
the States-General had established a fundamental principle 
that no resolution could be passed as the opinion of the 
whole unless each of the three orders concurred in its adop- 
tion. The right of levying and of regulating the collection 
of taxes was recognized. But that assembly, which met at 
Paris immediately after the battle, went far greater lengths 
in the reform and control of government. From the time of 
Philip the Fair the abuses natural to arbitrary power had 
harassed the people. There now seemed an opportunity of 
redress ; and however seditious, or even treasonable, may have 
been the motives of those who guided this assembly of the 
States, especially the famous Marcel, it is clear that many of 
their reformations tended to liberty and the public good.^ 
But the tumultuous scenes which passed in the capital, some- 
times heightened into civil war, necessarily distracted men 
from the common defence against Edward. These tumults 
were excited, and the distraction increased, by Charles King 
of Navarre, surnamed the Bad. He was grandson of Louis 

1 The reader is referred to tlie next chapter for more information on this subject. 
This separation is inconvenient, but it arose indispensably out of my arrangement, 
and prevented greater inconvenience. 



42 SUFFERINGS OF FRANCE. Chap. 1. Pakt II. 

Hutin, by Lis daughter Jane, and, if Edward's pretence of 
claiming through females could be admitted, was a nearer heir 
to the crown; the consciousness of which seems to have sug- 
gested itself to his depraved mind as an excuse for his treach- 
eries, though he could entertain very little prospect of asserting 
the claim against either contending party. He entered into 
alliances with Edward, and fomented the seditious spirit of 
Paris. Eloquent and insinuating, he was the favorite of the 
people, whose grievances he affected to pity, and with whose 
leaders he intrigued. 

There is no affliction which did not fall upon France dur- 
ing tiiis miserable period. A foreign enemy was in the heart 
of the kingdom, the king a prisoner, the capital in sedition, 
a treacherous prince of the blood in arms against the sover- 
eign authority. Famine, the sure and terrible companion of 
war, for several years desolated the country. In 1348 a pes- 
tilence, the most extensive and unsparing of which we have 
any memorial, visited France as well as the rest of Europe, 
and consummated the work of hunger and the sword.^ The 
companies of adventure, mercenary troops in the service 
of John or Edward, finding no immediate occupation after 
the truce of 1357, scattered themselves over the country in 
search of pillage. No force existed sufficiently powerful to 
check these robbers in their career. Undismayed by supersti- 
tion, they compelled the pope to redeem himself in Avignon 
by the payment of forty thousand crowns. France was the 
passive victim of their license, even after the pacification 
concluded Avith England, till some were diverted into Italy, 
and others led by Du Guesclin to the war of Castile. Im- 
patient of this wretchedness, and stung by the insolence and 
luxury of their lords, the peasantry of several districts broke 
out into a dreadful insurrection (a.d. 1358). This was called 
the Jacquerie, from the cant phrase Jacques Bonhomme, 
applied to men of that class ; and was marked by all the 
circumstances of horror incident to the rising of an exasper- 
ated and unenlightened populace. 

2 A full account of the ravajjes made by this memorable plngue mav be found in 
UFatteo Villain, the second of that family who wrote the history of Florence. His 
brother and predecessor, John Villani, was himself a victim to it. The disease began 
in the Levant about V-HG; from whence Italian traders brought it to Sicily, Pisa, and 
tJenoa. In 1348 it passed tlie Alps, spread over France and Spain ; in the next year it 
reached Britain, and in 1350 laid waste Germany and other northern states; lasting 
generally about five months in each country. At Florence more than three out of 
live died. The stories of Boccaccio's Decamerone, as is well known, are supposed to 
be related by a society of F"lorentiue ladies and gentlemen retired to the country 
during this pestilence. 

Aiiotlier pestilence, only less destructive than the former, wasted both France and 
England in 1361. The plague caused a truce of sevu'a.1 WQUtLls. The war was iufact 
carried ou with less vigor for some years. 



Feanck. CHARLES V. — PEACE OF BRETIGNI. 43 

§ 4. Subdued by these misfortunes, though Edward had 
made but slight progress towards the conquest of the coun- 
try, the regent of France, afterwards Charles V., submitted 
to the peace of Bretigni (a.d. 1360). By this treaty, not to 
mention less important articles, all Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, 
Saintonge, the Limousin, and the Angoumois, as well as 
Calais, and the country of Ponthieu, were ceded in full sov- 
ereignty to Edward; a price abundantly compensating his 
renunciation of the title of France, which was the sole con- 
cession stipulated in return. At Calais this treaty was re- 
newed by John, who, as a prisoner, had been no party to the 
former compact, and who now returned to his dominions. 

When the peace of Bretigni was to be carried into effect the 
nobility of the south remonstrated against the loss of the 
king's sovereignty, and showed, it is said, in their charters 
granted by Charlemagne, a promise never to transfer the right 
of protecting them to another. The citizens of liochelle im- 
plored the king not to desert them, and protested their readi- 
ness to pay half their estates in taxes, rather than fall under 
the power of England. John with heaviness of heart per- 
suaded these faithful people to comply with that destiny which 
he had not been able to surmount. At length they sullenly 
submitted : we will obey, they said, the English with our lips, 
but our hearts shall never forget their allegiance. Such un- 
willing subjects might perhaps have been won by a prudent 
government; but the temper of the Prince of Wales, which 
was rather stern and arbitrary, did not conciliate their hearts 
to his cause. After the expedition into Castile, a most inju- 
dicious and fatal enterprise, he attempted to impose a heavy 
tax upon Guienne. This was extended to the lands of the 
nobility, who claimed an immunity from all impositions. 
Many of the chief lords in Guienne and Gascony carried their 
complaints to the throne of Charles V., who had succeeded his 
father in 13G4, appealing to him as the prince's sovereign and 
judge. After a year's delay the king ventured to summon the 
Black Prince to answer these charges before the peers of 
France, and the war immediately recommenced between the 
two countries (a.d. 1368). 

§ 5. Though it is impossible to reconcile the conduct of 
Charles upon this occasion to the stern principles of rectitude 
which ought always to be obeyed, yet the exceeding injustice 
of Edward in the former war, and the miseries which he in- 
flicted upon an unoffending people in the prosecution of his 
claim, will go far towards extenuating this breach of the treaty 



44 KENEWAL OF THE WAR. Chap. I. Pakt II. 

of Bretigni. The measures of Charles had been so sagaciously 
taken, that, except through that perverseness of fortune, 
against which, especially in Avar, there is no security, he could 
hardly fail of success. The elder Edward was declining through 
age, and the younger through disease; the ceded provinces 
were eager to return to their native king, and their garrisons, 
as Ave may infer by their easy reduction, feeble and ill-supplied. 
France, on the other hand, had recovered breath after her 
losses ; the sons of those who had fallen or fled at Poitiers 
Avere in the field; a king, not personally Avarlike, but emi- 
nently Avise and popular, occupied the throne of the rash and 
intemperate John. She Avas restored by the policy of Charles 
V. and the valor of Du Guesclin. This hero, a Breton gentle- 
man Avithout fortune or exterior graces, Avas the greatest 
ornament of France during that age. Though inferior, as it 
seems, to Lord Chandos in military skill, as Avell as in the 
polished virtues of chivalry, his uuAvearied activity, his talent 
of inspiring confidence, his good fortune, the generosity and 
frankness of his character, have preserved a fresh recollec- 
tion of his name, Avhich has hardly been the case with our 
countryman. 

In a fcAv campaigns the English Avere deprived of almost all 
their conquests, and even, in a great degree, of their original 
possessions in "Guienne. They were still formidable enemies, 
not only from their courage and alacrity in the Avar, but on ac- 
count of the keys of France which they held in their hands — 
Bordeaux, Bayonne, and Calais, by inheritance or conquest ; 
]>rest and Cherbourg, in mortgage from their allies, the Duke of 
Brittany and King of Navarre. But the successor of Edward 

III. Avas Ivichard II. ; a reign of feebleness and sedition gave no 
opportunity for prosecuting schemes of ambition. The Avar, 
protracted Avith few distinguished events for several years, Avas 
at length suspended by repeated armistices, not, indeed, very 
strictly observed, and Avhich the animosity of the English 
Avould not permit to settle in any regular treaty. Nothing less 
than the terms obtained at Bretigni, emphatically called the 
Great Peace, Avould satisfy a frank and courageous people, Avho 
deemed themselves cheated by the manner of its infraction. 
The war was therefore always popular in England, and the 
credit Avhich an ambitious prince, Thomas duke of Gloucester, 
obtained in that country, Avas chiefly owing to the determined 
opposition which he showed to all French connections. But 
the politics of Richard 11. Avere of a different cast ; and Henry 

IV. Avas equally anxious to avoid hostilities with France ; so 



Fkance. accession OF CHARLES VI. 45 

that, before the unhappy condition of that kingdom tempted 
his son to revive the claims of Edward in still more favorable 
circumstances, there had been thirty years of respite, and even 
some intervals of friendly intercourse between the two nations. 

§ 6. Charles V., surnanied the Wise, after a reign which, 
if we overlook a little oblicpiity in the rupture of the peace 
of Bretigni, may be deemed one of the most honorable in 
French history, dying i)rematurely, left the crown to his son, 
Charles VI. (a.d. 1380), a boy of thirteen, under the care of 
three ambitious uncles, the dukes of Anjou, Berry, and Bur- 
gundy. Charles V. had retrieved the glory, restored the 
tranquillity, revived the spirit, of his country ; the severe 
trials wdiich exercised his regency after the battle of Poitiers 
had disciplined his mind ; he became a sagacious statesman, 
an encourager of literature, a beneficent lawgiver. But all 
the fruits of his wisdom were lost in the succeeding reign. 
During the forty years that Charles VI. bore the name of 
king, rather than reigned, in France, that country was re- 
duced to a state far more deplorable than during the captivity 
of John. 

A great change had occurred in the political condition of 
France during the fourteenth century. As the feudal militia 
became unserviceable, the expenses of war were increased 
through the necessity of taking troops into constant pay. 
Hence taxes, hitherto almost unknown, were levied incessantly, 
and with all those circumstances of oppression which are 
natural to the fiscal proceedings of an arbitrary government. 
The ill faith with which the new government imposed sub- 
sidies, after promising their abolition, provoked the people of 
Paris, and sometimes of other places, to repeated seditions. 
The States-General not only compelled the government to 
revoke these impositions and restore the nation, at least 
according to the language of edicts, to all their liberties, but, 
with less wisdom, refused to make any grant of money. In- 
deed a remarkable spirit of democratical freedom was then 
rising in those classes on whom the crown and nobility had so 
long trampled. An example was held out by the Flemings, 
who, always tenacious of their privileges, because conscious of 
their ability to maintain them, were engaged in a furious con- 
flict with Louis, count of Flanders. The court of France took 
part in this war ; and after obtaining a decisive victory over 
the citizens of Ghent, Charles V. returned to chastise those of 
Paris. Unable to resist the royal army, the city was treated 
as the spoil of conquest ; its immunities abridged ; its most 



46 CIVIL DISSENSIONS OF THE PAIITIES. Chap. I. Paiit II, 

active leaders put to death ; a fine of uiicouimon severity im- 
posed ; and the taxes renewed by arbitrary prerogative. But 
the people preserved their indignation for a favorable moment ; 
and were unfortunately led by it, when rendered subservient 
to the ambition of others, into a series of crimes, and a long 
alienation from the interests of their country. 

Though Charles VI. was considered from the time of his 
coronation as reigning with full personal authority, the actual 
exercise of government was divided between Anjou, Berry, 
and Burgundy, together with the king's maternal uncle, the 
Duke of Bourbon. The first of these soon undertook an expe- 
dition into Italy, to possess himself of the crown of Najjles, 
in which he perished. Berry was a profuse and voluptuous 
man, of no great talents ; though his rank, and the middle 
position which he held between struggling parties, made him 
rather conspicuous throughout the revolutions of that age. 
The most respectable of the king's uncles, the Duke of Boiir- 
bon, being farther removed from the royal stem, and of an 
unassuming character, took a less active part than his three 
coadjutors. Burgundy, an ambitious and able prince, main- 
tained tlie ascendancy, until Charles, weary of a restraint 
whicli had been protracted by his uncle till he Avas in his 
twenty-tirst year, took the reins into his own hands (a.d. 1387). 
The dukes of Burgundy and Berry retired from court, and the 
administration was committed to a different set of men, at the 
head of wliom appeared the constable de Clisson, a soldier of 
great fame in the English wars. The i)eople rejoiced in the 
fall of the princes by whose exactions they had been plun- 
dered ; but the new ministers soon rendered themselves odious 
by similar conduct. 

Charles VI. had reigned five years from his assumption of 
power, when he was seized with a derangement of intellect 
(a.d. 1303), which continued, through a series of recoveries 
and rela})ses, to his death. He passed thirty years in a ])iti- 
able state of suffering, neglected by his family, particularly 
by the most infamous of women, Isabel of Bavaria, his queen, 
to a degree Avhich is hardly credible.^ The ministers were 
immediately disgraced ; the princes reassumed their stations. 

3 Sisiiiondi inclines to speak more favorably of this fjiieen than most have done. 
He discredits the suspicion of a criTiiitial iutercours" with the duke of Orleans, and 
represents her as merely an indolent woman fond of good cheer. Yet he owns that 
the king was so neglected as to sutler from an excessive want of cleanliness, some- 
times even from hunger (xii., 218, 225). Was tins no iniputation on his wife? Martin 
says that contemporary writers do not mention expressly the criminal intercourse 
between Isabel and the duke of Orleans, but he adds, " ce qu'on salt des nupurs du 
due et de sa belle-soeur permet difficilemeut de croire en I'inuoceuce de leur iutimite" 
(v., 471). 



France. OF ORLEANS AND BURGtJNDY. 47 

§ 7. For several years the Duke of lUirgiiiuly conducted tlie 
govermiient. But this was in opposition to a formidable rival, 
Louis, duke of Orleans, the king's brother. It was impossible 
that a prince so near to the throne, favored by the queen 
perhaps with criminal fondness, and by the people on account 
of his external graces, should not acquire a share of power. 
He succeeded at length in obtaining the whole management 
of affairs ; wherein the outrageous dissoluteness of his con- 
duct, and still more the excessive taxes imposed, render liim 
altogether odious. The Parisians compared his administration 
with that of the Duke of Burgundy ; and from that time 
ranged themselves on the side of the latter and his family, 
throughout the long distractions to which the ambition of 
these princes gave birth. 

The death of the Duke of Burgundy, in 1404, after several 
fluctuations of success between him and the Duke of Orleans, 
by no means left Ids party without a head. Equally brave 
and ambitious, but far more audacious and unprincipled, his 
son John, surnamed Sanspeur, sustained the same contest. 
A reconciliation had been, however, brought about with the 
Duke of Orleans; they had sworn reciprocal friendship, and 
participated, as was the custom, in order to render these obli- 
gations more solemn, in the same communion. In the midst 
of this outward harmony, the Duke of Orleans was assassinated 
in the streets of Paris (a.d. 1407). After a slight attempt at 
concealment, Burgundy avowed and boasted of the crime. 
From this fatal moment the dissensions of the royal family 
began to assume the complexion of civil war. The queen, the 
sons of the Duke of Orleans, with the dukes of Berry and 
Bourbon, united against the assassin. But he possessed, in 
addition to his own appanage of Burgundy, the county of 
Flanders as his maternal inheritance ; and the people of Pa,ris, 
Avho hated the Duke of Orleans, readily forgave, or rather 
exulted in, his murder. He soon obtained the management 
of affairs, and drove his adversaries from the capital. The 
princes, headed by the father-in-law of the young Duke of 
Orleans, the Count of Armagnac, from whom their party was 
now denominated, raised their standard against him ; and the 
north of France was rent to pieces by a protracted civil war, 
in which neither party scrupled any extremity of pillage or 
massacre. The dauphin, aware of the tyranny which the two 
parties alternately exercised, was forced, even at the expense 
of perpetuating a civil war, to balance one against the other, 
and permit neither to be wholly subdued. In 1417 the Count 



48 CHARLES VI. Chap. I. Part II. 

of Armagnac, now constable of France, was in possession of 
the government. But his severity, and the weight of taxes, 
revived the Burgundian party in Paris, wliicli a rigid proscrip- 
tion had endeavored to destroy. He brought on his head the 
implacable hatred of the queen, whom he had not only shut 
out from pviblic affairs, but disgraced by the detection of her 
gallantries. Notwithstanding her ancient enmity to the Duke 
of Burgundy, she made overtures to him, and, being delivered 
by his troops from confinement, declared herself openly on his 
side. A few obscure persons stole the city keys, and admitted 
the Burgundians into Paris. The tumult which arose showed 
in a moment the disposition of the inhabitants ; but this was 
more horribly displayed a few days afterwards, when the 
populace, rushing to the prisons, massacred the constable 
D' Armagnac and his partisans (a.d. 1418). Between three 
and four thousand persons were murdered on this day, which 
has no parallel but what the last age witnessed, in the massa- 
cre perpetrated by the same ferocious populace of Paris under 
circumstances nearly similar. Not long afterwards an agree- 
ment took place between the Duke of Burgundy, who had now 
the king's person as well as the capital in his hands, and the 
dauphin, whose party was enfeebled by the loss of almost all 
its leaders. This reconciliation, which mutual interest should 
have rendered permanent, had lasted a very short time, when 
the Duke of Burgundy was assassinated at Montereau, at an 
interview with Charles, in his presence, and by the hands of 
his friends, though not, perhaps, with his previous knowledge 
(a.d. 1419). From whomsoever the crime proceeded, it was a 
deed of infatuation, and plunged France afresh into a sea of 
])erils, from which the union of these factions had just afforded 
a hope of extricating her. 

§ 8. It has been mentioned already that the English war 
had almost ceased during the reigns of Richard II. and Henry 
IV. A long commercial connection had subsisted between 
England and Flanders, which the dukes of Burgundy, when 
they became sovereigns of the latter country upon the death 
of Count Louis, in 1384, were studious to preserve by separate 
truces. They acted upon the same pacific policy when their 
interest predominated in the councils of France. Henry had 
even a negotiation pending for the marriage of his eldest son 
with a princess of Burgundy, when an unexpected proposal 
from the opposite side set more tempting views before his 
eyes. The Armagnacs, pressed hard by the Duke of Burgundy, 
offered, in consideration of only 4,0(10 troops, the pay of which 



Prance. BATTLE OF AZINCOURT. 49 

tliey would themselves defray, to assist him in the recovery of 
Guienne and l*oitou. Four princes of the blood — Berry, 
Bourbon, Orleans, and Alenyon — disgraced their names by 
signing this treaty (May, 1412). Henry broke off his alliance 
with Burgundy, and sent a force into France, which found, on 
its arrival, that the princes had made a separate treaty, with- 
out the least concern for their English allies. After his death, 
Henry V. engaged for some time in a series of negotiations 
with the French court, where the Orleans party now prevailed, 
and with the Duke of Burgundy. He even secretly treated at 
the same time for a marriage witli Catherine of France (which 
seems to have been his favorite, as it was ultimately his suc- 
cessfvd, project), and with a daughter of the duke — a duplicity 
not creditable to his memory. But Henry's ambition, which 
aimed at the highest quarry, was not long fettered by negotia- 
tion ; and, indeed, his proposals of marrying Catherine were 
coupled with such exorbitant demands as France, notwith- 
standing all her weakness, could not admit, though she would 
have ceded Guienne, and given a vast dowry with the princess. 
He invaded jSTormandy, took Harfleur, and won the great battle . 
of Azincourt, on his march to Calais (a.d. 1415). 

The flower of French chivalry was mowed down in this 
fatal day ; but especially the chiefs of the Orleans party, and 
the princes of the royal blood, met with death or captivity. 
Burgundy had still suffered nothing ; but a clandestine nego- 
tiation had secured the duke's neutrality, though he seems not 
to have entered into a regular alliance till a year after the 
battle of Azincourt, when, by a secret treaty at Calais, he ac- 
knowledged the right of Henry to the crown of France, and 
his own obligation to do him liomage, though its performance 
was to be suspended till Henry should become master of a 
considerable part of the kingdom. In a second invasion the 
English achieved the conquest of Normandy ; and this, in all 
subsequent negotiations for peace during the life of Henry, 
he would never consent to relinquish. After several confer- 
ences, which his demands rendered abortive, the French court 
at length consented to add Normandy to the cessions made in 
the peace at Bretigni ; and the treaty, though laboring under 
some ditilculties, seems to have been nearly completed, when 
the Duke of Burgundy, for reasons unexplained, suddenly 
came to a reconciliation with the dauphin (July 11, 1419). 
This event, which must have been intended adversely to 
Henry, would probably have broken off' all parley on the sub- 
ject of peace, if it had not been speedily followed by one still 



50 THE TREATY OF TROYES. Chap. I. Part II. 

more surprising — the assassination of the Dnke of Burgundy 
at Montereau already mentioned (Sept. 10, 1419). 

§ 9. An act of treachery so apparently unprovoked inflamed 
the minds of that powerful party which had looked up to the 
duke as their leader and patron. The city of Paris, especially, 
abjured at once its respect for the supposed author of the 
miirder, though the legitimate heir of the crown. A solemn 
oath Avas taken by all ranks to revenge the crime ; the nobility, 
the clergy, the Parliament, vying with the populace in their 
invectives against Charles, whom they now styled only pre- 
tended (soi-disant) dauphin. Philip, son of the assassinated 
duke, who, with all the popularity and much of the ability of 
his father, did not inherit all his depravity, was instigated by 
a pardonable excess of filial resentment to ally himself with 
the King of England. These passions of the people, and the 
Duke of Burgundy, concurring with the imbecility of Charles 
VI. and the rancor of Isabel towards her son, led to the treaty 
of Troyes (May, 1420). This compact, signed by the queen 
and duke, as proxies of the king, who had fallen into a state 
of unconscious idiotcy, stipulated that Henry V., upon his 
marriage with Catherine, should become immediately regent 
of France, and, after the death of Charles, succeed to the king- 
dom, in exclusion not only of the dauphin, but of all the royal 
family. It is unnecessary to remark that these flagitious pro- 
visions were absolutely invalid. But they had at tlie time the 
strong sanction of force ; and Henry might plausibly flatter 
himself with a hope of establishing his own usurpation as 
flrmly in France as his father's had been in England. What 
not even the comprehensive policy of Edward III., the energy 
of the Black Prince, the valor of their Knollyses and Chan- 
doses, nor his own victories, could attain, now seemed, by a 
strange vicissitude of fortune, to court his ambition. During 
two years that Henry lived after the treaty of Troyes, he gov- 
erned the north of France with unlimited authority in the 
name of Charles VI. The latter survived his son-in-law but a 
few weeks ; and the infant Henry VI. was immediately pro- 
claimed King of France and England, under the regency of 
his uncle, the Duke of Bedford. 

§ 10. Notwithstanding the disadvantage of a minority, the 
English cause was less weakened by the death of Henry than 
might have been expected. The Duke of Bedford partook of 
the same character, and resembled his brother in faults as well 
as virtues ; in his hauglitincss and arbitrary temper as in his 
energy and address. At the accession of Charles VII. (a.d. 



I 



France. PROGRESS OF ENGLISH ARMS IN FRANCE. 51 

1422) the usurper was acknowledged by all the northern prov- 
inces of France, except a few fortresses, by most of Guienne, 
and the dominions of Burgundy. The Duke of Brittany soon 
afterwards acceded to the treaty of Troyes, but clianged his 
party again several times within a few years. Tlie central 
provinces, with Languedoc, Poitou, and Dauphine, were faith- 
ful to the king. For some years the war continued without 
any decisive result ; but the balance was clearly swayed in 
favor of England. For this it is not difficult to assign several 
causes. The animosity of the Parisians and the Duke of Bur- 
gundy against the Armagnac party still continued, mingled in 
the former with dread of the king's return, whom they judged 
themselves to have inexpiably offended. The war had brought 
forward some accomplished commanders in the English army ; 
surpassing not, indeed, in valor and enterprise, but in military 
skill, any whom France could oppose to them. Of these the 
most distinguished, besides the Duke of Bedford himself, were 
Warwick, Salisbury, and Talbot. Their troops, too, were still 
very superior to the' French. But this, we must in candor 
allow, proceeded in a great degree from the mode in which 
they were raised. The war was so popular in England, that 
it was easy to pick the best and stoutest recruits, and their 
high pay allured men of respectable condition to the service. 
We find in Kynier a contract of the Earl of Salisbury to sup- 
ply a body of troops, receiving a shilling a day for every man- 
at-arms, and sixpence for each archer.* This is, perhaps, equal 
to fifteen times the sum at our present value of money. Tiiey 
were bound, indeed, to furnish their own equipments and horses. 
But France was totally exhausted by her civil and foreign 
war, and incompetent to defray the expenses even of the small 
force which defended the wreck of the monarchy. Charles 
VII. lived in the utmost poverty at Bourges. The nobility had 
scarcely recovered from the fatal slaughter of Azincourt ; and 
the infantry, composed of peasants or burgesses, which had 
made their army so numerous upon that day, whether from 
inability to compel their services, or experience of their inefii- 
cacy, were never called into the field. 

It was, however, in the temper of Charles VII. that his 
enemies found their chief advantage. This prince is one of 
tlie few whose character has been improved by prosperity. 

4 Rym. t. X., p. 302. Tliis contract was for 000 men-at-arms, including six bannerets 
and thirty-four bachelors; and for. 1,700 archers ;bi('U et surtisaniment moutez.armez, 
et arraiez coinnie a leurs cstats appartient. I'he ])ay was, for the earl, fl.s'. Hd. a day; 
for a banneret, 4s. ; for a bachelor. 2s. ; for every other man-at-arms, Is. ; and for each 
archer, M. Artillerymen were paid liiglier than men-at-arms. 



52 THE MAID OF ORLEANS. Chap. I. Part II. 

During the calamitous morning of iiis reign he shrunk from 
fronting the storm, and. strove to forget himself in pleasure. 
Though brave, he was never seen in war ; though intelligent, 
he was governed by flatterers. Those who had. committed the 
assassination at Montereau under his eyes were his first favo- 
rites ; as if he had determined to avoid the only measure through 
which he could hope for better success — a reconciliation with 
the Duke of Burgundy. 

§ 11. It cannot, therefore, surprise us that, with all these 
advantages, the regent Duke of Bedford, had almost completed 
the capture of the fortresses north of the Loire when he in- 
vested Orleans in 1428. If this city had fallen, the central 
provinces, which were less furnished with defensible places, 
would have lain open to the enemy ; and it is said that Charles 
VII. in despair was about to retire into Dauphine. At this 
time his affairs were restored, by one of the most marvellous 
revolutions in history. A coimtry girl overthrew the power of 
England. We cannot pretend, to explain the surprising story 
of the Maid of Orleans ; for, however easy it may be to suj)- 
pose that a heated and. enthusiastic imagination produced her 
own visions, it is a much greater problem to account for the 
credit they obtained, and for the success that attended her. 
Nor will this be solved by the hypothesis of a concerted strat- 
agem ; which, if we do not judge altogether from events, must 
appear liable to so many chances of faihire that it could not 
have suggested itself to any rational person. However, it is 
certain that the appearance of Joan of Arc ^ turned the tide 
of war, which from that moment flowed Avithout interruption 
in Charles's favor. A superstitious aAve enfeebled the sinews 
of the English. They hung back in their own country, or de- 
serted from the arms, through fear of the incantations by 
which alone they conceived so extraordinary a person to suc- 
ceed. As men always make sure of Providence for an ally, 
whatever untOAvard fortune appeared to result from preternat- 
ural causes Avas at once ascribed to infernal enemies ; and such 
bigotry may be pleaded as an excuse, though a very miserable 
one, for the detestable murder of this heroine. 

The spirit which Joan of Arc had roused did not subside. 
France recovered confidence in her oavu strength, Avhich had 
been chilled by a long course of adverse fortune. The king, 

5 I have followed the common practice of translating Jeanne d'Arc by Joan of Arc. 
It does not appear, however, tliat any such place as Arc exists in tliat neighborhood, 
tliough there is a town of that name at a considc lalile distance. Joan was, as is 
known, a native of tlie village of Domremy, in Lorraine. The correct orthography of 
her name is Dare, as is shown by Michelet and H. Martin. 



Fkance. condition OF FRANCE. 53 

too, shook off his intlolence,^ and permitted Richemont, brother 
of the Duke of Brittany, to exclude his unwortliy favorites 
from the court. This led to a very important consequence. 
The Duke of Burgundy, whose alliance with England had 
been only the fruit of indignation at his father's murder, fell 
naturally, as that passion wore out, into sentiments more con- 
genial to his birth and interests, A prince of the house of 
Capet could not willingly see the inheritance of his ancestors 
transferred to a stranger. Yet the union of his sister with 
Bedford, the obligations by Avhich he was bound, and, most of 
all, the favor shown by Charles VII. to the assassins of his 
father, kept him for many years on the English side, altliough 
rendering it less and less assistance. But at length he con- 
cluded a treaty at Arras (a.d. 1435), the terms of which he 
dictated rather as a conqueror than a subject negotiating with 
his sovereign. Charles, however, refused nothing for such an 
end ; and, in a very short time, the Burgundians were ranged 
with the French against their old allies of England. 

§ 12. It was now time for the latter to abandon those mag- 
nificent projects of conquering France which temporary cir- 
cumstances alone had seemed to render feasible. As foreign 
enemies, they were odious even in that part of France which 
had acknowledged Henry ; and when the Duke of Burgundy 
deserted their side, Paris and every other city were impatient 
to throw off the yoke. A feeble monarchy, and a selfish coun- 
cil, completed their ruin : the necessary subsidies were raised 
with difficulty, and, when raised, misapplied. It is a proof of 
the exhaustion of France, that Charles was unable, for several 
years, to reduce Normandy or Guienne, which were so ill-pro- 
vided for defence. At last he came with collected strength to 
the contest, and, breaking an armistice upon slight pretences, 

8 It is a current piece of history that Agnes Sorel, mistress of Charles VII., liad the 
merit of dissuading; liim from K'^'i"" "P the kinj!;doni as lost at tlie time when Orleans 
was besicjjcd in 14-'s. Mozeray, Daniel, Villaret, .and, I believe, every other modern 
historian, have mentioned this circumstance; and some of them, amonf; whom Is 
Hume, with the addition that Agnes threatened to leave the court of Charles for that 
of Henry, affirming that she was born to be the mistress of a great l^ing. The latter 
part of this tale is evidently a fabrication, Henry VI. being at the time a child of seven 
years old. But the story is not mentioned by contemporary writers, and Martin has 
shown (vi., 321) that Charles did not become acquainted witli Agnes Sorel before H3.3; 
consequently five years after tlie siege of Orleans. 'I'he tradition, however, is as an- 
cient as Francis I., who made in her honor a quatrain which is well known. This 
probably may have brought the story more into vogue, and led Mezeray, who was 
not very critical, to insert it in his history, from which it has passed to his followers. 
Its origin was apparently the popular character of Agnes. She was the Nell Gwyn 
of France, and justly beloved, not only for her charity and courtesy, but for bring- 
ing forward men of merit and turning her infiuence, a virtue very rare in her class, 
towanls the public interest. From tiience it was natural to bestow upon lier, in after 
times, a merit not ill suited to her character, but which an accurate observation of 
dates renders impossible. 



54 CONDITIOK OF FRANCE. Chap. I. Part II. 

within two years overwhelmed the English garrisons in each 
of these provinces (a.d. 1449). All the inheritance of Henry 
II. and Eleanor, all the conquests of Edward III. and Henrj- 
V. except Calais and a small adjacent district, were irrecover- 
ably torn from the crown of England. A barren title, that 
idle trophy of disappointed ambition, was preserved with 
strange obstinacy to our own age. 

§ 13. At the expulsion of the English, France emerged 
from the chaos with an altered character and new features of 
government. The royal authority and supreme jurisdiction of 
the Parliament Avere universally recognized. Yet there was a 
tendency towards insubordination left among the great nobility, 
arising in part from the remains of old feudal privileges, but 
still more from that lax administration which, in the convul- 
sive struggles of the war, had been suffered to prevail. In 
the south were some considerable vassals, the houses of Foix, 
Albret, and Armagnac, who, on account of their distance from 
the seat of empire, had always maintained a very independent 
conduct. The dukes of Brittany and Burgundy were of a 
more formidable character, and might rather be ranked among 
foreign powers than privileged subjects. The princes, too, of 
the royal blood, who, during the late reign, had learned to 
partake or contend for the management, were ill-inclined 
towards Charles VII., himself jealous, from old recollections, 
of their ascendency. They saw that the constitution was 
verging rapidly towards an absolute monarchy, from the direc- 
tion of which they would studiously be excluded. This ap- 
prehension gave rise to several attempts at rebellion during 
the reign of Charles YII. Among the pretences alleged by 
the revolters in each of these, the injuries of the peojile were 
not forgotten ; but from tlie people they received small support. 
Weary of civil dissension, and anxious for a strong govern- 
ment to secure them from depredations, the French had no 
inducement to intrust even their real grievances to a few mal- 
content princes, whose regard for the common good they had 
much reason to distrust. Every circumstance favored Charles 
VII. and his son in the attainment of arbitrary power. The 
country was pillaged by military ruffians. Charles established 
his companies of ordonnance, the basis of the French regular 
army, in order to protect the country from such depredators. 
They consisted of about 9,000 soldiers, all cavalry, of whom 
1,500 were heavy-armed ; a force not very considerable, but tlie 
first, except mere body-guards, which had been raised in any 
part of Europe as a national standing army. These troojis 



Fkance. LOUIS XI. 55 

were paid out of the produce of a permauent tax, called the 
taille ; an innovation still more ini})ortant than the former. 
But the present benefit cheating the people, now prone to sub- 
missive habits, little or no opposition was made, except in 
Guienne, the inhabitants of which had speedy reason to regret 
the mild government of England, and vainly endeavored to 
return to its protection. 

§ 14. It was not long before the new despotism exhibited 
itself in its harshest character. Louis XI., son of Charles 
VII., who, during his father's reign, had been connected with 
the discontented princes, came to the throne (a.d. 1461) greatly 
endowed with those virtues and vices which conspire to the 
success of a king. Laborious vigilance in business, contempt 
of pomp, affability to inferiors, were his excellences ; quali- 
ties especially praiseworthy in an age characterized by idle- 
ness, love of pageantry, and insolence. To these virtues he 
added a perfect knowledge of all persons endnent for talents 
or influence in the countries with which he was connected, and 
a Avell-judged bounty, that thought no expense wasted to draw 
them into his service or interest. In the fifteenth century 
this political art had hardly been known, except perhaps in 
Italy ; the princes of Europe had contended with each other 
by arms, sometimes by treachery, but never with such compli- 
cated subtlety of intrigue. Of that insidious cunning, which 
has since been brought to perfection, Louis XL may be deemed 
not absolutely the inventor, but the most eminent improver ; 
and its success has led, perhaps, to too high an estimate of his 
abilities. Like most bad men, he sometimes fell into his own 
snare, and was betrayed by his confidential ministers, because 
his confidence was generally reposed in the wicked. And his 
dissimulation was so notorious, his tyrainiy so oppressive, that 
he was naturally surrounded by enemies, and had occasion for 
all his craft to elude those rebellions and confederacies which 
might perhaps not have been raised against a more upriglit 
sovereign. At one time the monarchy was on the point of 
sinking before a combination which would have ended in dis- 
membering France. This was the league denominated of the 
Public Weal (a.d. 1461), in which all the princes and great 
vassals of the French crown were concerned ; the dukes of 
Brittany, Burgundy, Alen9on, Bourbon, the Count of Dunois, 
so renowned for his valor in the English wars, the families of 
Foix and Armagnac ; and at the head of all, Charles, duke 
of Berry, the king's brother and presumptive h.cir. S t iraai:i- 
mous a combination was not formed without a strong provoca- 



56 APPANAGES. Chap. I. Paut II. 

tion from the king, or at least without weighty grounds for 
distrusting his intentions ; but the luore remote cause of this 
confederacy, as of those which had been raised against Charles 
VII., was the critical position of the feudal aristocracy from 
the increasing jiower of the crown. This war of the Public 
Weal Avas, in fact, a struggle to preserve their independence ; 
and from the weak character of the Duke of Berry, whom they 
would, if successful, have placed upon the throne, it is possible 
that France might have been in a manner partitioned among 
them in the event of their success, or, at least, that Burgundy 
and Brittany would have thrown off the sovereignty that galled 
them. 

The strength of the confederates in this war much exceeded 
that of the king; but it was not judiciously employed; and 
after an indecisive battle at Montlhery they failed in the great 
object of reducing Paris, which would have obliged Louis to 
fly fi'om his dominions. It Avas his policy to promise every 
thing, in trust that fortune would afford some opening to repair 
his losses and give scope to liis siiperior prudence. Accord- 
ingly, by the treaty of Conflans, he not only surrendered afresh 
the towns upon the Somme, wliich he had lately redeemed from 
the Duke of Burgundy, but invested his brother with the duchy 
of Normandy as his appanage. 

The term aj^panage denotes the provision made for the 
younger children of the King of Prance. This always con- 
sisted of lands and feudal superiorities held of the crown by 
the tenure of peerage. It is evident that this usage, as it pro- 
duced a new class of powerful feudatories, was hostile to the 
interests and policy of the sovereign, and retarded the subju- 
gation of the ancient aristocracy. But an usage coeval with 
the monarchy was not to be abrogated, and the scarcity of 
money rendered it impossible to provide for the younger 
branches of the royal family by any other means. It was 
restrained, however, as far as circumstances would permit. 
Philip IV. declared that the county of Poitiers, bestowed by 
him on his son, should revert to the crown on the extinction 
of male heirs. But this, though an important precedent, was 
not, as has often been asserted, a general law. Charles V. 
limited the appanages of his own sons to twelve thousand 
livres of annual value in land. By means of their appan- 
ages, and through the operation of the Salic law, which made 
their inheritance of the crown a less remote contingency, the 
princes of the blood royal in France Avere at all times (for 
the remark is applicable long after Louis XL) a distinct an^ 



FiiANCE. APPANAGES. 57 

formidable class of men, whose influence was always disad- 
vantageous to the reigning monarch, and, in general, to the 
people. 

No appanage had ever been granted to France so enormous 
as the duchy of Normandy. One-third of the whole national 
revenue, it is declared, was derived from that rich province. 
Louis could not, therefore, sit down under such terms as, with 
his usual insincerity, he had accepted at Conttans. In a very 
short time he attacked Normandy, and easily compelled his 
brother to take refuge in Brittany ; nor were his enemies ever 
able to procure the restitution of Charles's appanage. During 
the rest of his reign Louis had powerful coalitions to with- 
stand; but his prudence and compliance with circumstances, 
joined to some mixture of good fortune, brought him safely 
through his perils. The Duke of Brittany, a prince of mod- 
erate talents, was unable to make any formidable impression, 
though generally leagued with the enemies of the king. The 
less powerful vassals were successfully crushed by Louis with 
decisive vigor ; the duchy of Alen9on was confiscated ; the 
Count of Armagnac was assassinated ; the Duke of Nemours, 
and the constable of St. Poll, a politician as treacherous as 
Louis, who had long betrayed both him and the Duke of 
Burgundy, suffered upon the scaffold. The king's brother 
Charles, after disquieting him for many years, died suddenly 
in Guienne, which had finally been granted as his appanage 
(a.d. 1472). Edward IV. of England was too dissipated and 
too indolent to be fond of war ; and, though he once entered 
France with an army more considerable than could have been 
expected after such civil bloodshed as England had witnessed, 
he was induced, by the stipulation of a large pension, to give 
up the enterprise. So terrible was still in France the appre- 
liension of an English war, that Louis prided himself upon 
no part of his policy so much as the warding this blow (a.d. 
1475). Edward showed a desire to visit Paris ; but the king 
gave him no invitation, lest, he said, his brother should find 
some handsome woman there, who might tempt him to re- 
turn in a different manner. Hastings, Howard, and other of 
Edward's ministers, were secured by bribes in the interest 
of Louis, which the first of these did not scruple to receive 
at the same time from the Duke of Burgundy. 

§ 15. This Avas the most powerful enemy whom the craft 
of Louis had to counteract. In the last days of the feudal 
system, when the house of Capet had almost acliieved the 
subjugation of those proud vassals among whom it had been 



58 THE HOUSE OF BURGUNDY. Chap. I. Pakt II. 

originally numbered, a new antagonist sprang up to dispute 
the field against the crown. John, king of France, granted 
the duchy of Burgundy, by way of appanage, to his third 
son, Philip. By his marriage with Margaret, heiress of Louis, 
count of Flanders, Philip acquired that province, Artois, the 
county of Burgundy '' (or Franche-comte), and the Nivernois. 
Philip the Good, his grandson, who carried the prosperity of 
this family to its height, possessed himself, by various titles, 
of the several other provinces which composed the Nether- 
lands. These were fiefs of the empire, but latterly not much 
dependent upon it, and alienated by their owners without its 
consent. At the peace of Arras the districts of Macon and 

GENEALOGICAL TABLE OF THE SECOND DUCAL HOUSE OF 
BUUGUNDY. 

John, king of France, inherits tlie duchy as nearest lieir male of the late Duke Philippe 
de Kouvre, l.'iOl. 

Philip, fourth sou of King John, creat<'d Duke of Burgundy, 136-1, ob. 1404. 

I 
Jean Sanspeur, killed at Moulereau, Ml'J. 

I 
Philip (le Bon), ob. 1407. 

1 
Charles (le Tenieraire), ob. 1477. 

Mary, duchess of Burgundy=Ma.xiniilian, arcluKike of Austria. 

Philip, archduke of Austria, = Juana, heiress of Castile and Aragon. 

and sovereign of the Netherlands, I 
ob. 1506. 

Charles V., king of Spain, sovereign of the Netherlands, and emperor, 1519. 

Auxerre were absolutely ceded to Philip, and great part of 
Picardy conditionally made over to him, redeemable on the 
payment of four hundred thousand crowns. These extensive, 
though not compact dominions, were abundant in population 
and wealth, fertile in corn, wine, and salt, and full of com- 
mercial activity. Thirty years of peace which followed the 
treaty of Arras, with a mild and free government, raised the 
subjects of Burgundy to a degree of prosperity quite unpar- 
alleled in these times of disorder; and this was displayed in 
general sumptuousness of dress and feasting. The court of 
Philip and of his son Charles was distinguished for its pomp 
and riches, for pageants and tournaments ; the trappings of 
chivaliy, perliaps without its spirit; for the military character 
of Burgundy had been ini})aired by long tranquillity. 

' See Note VIIL, p. 68. 



France. CHARLES THE BOLD. 59 

During the lives of Philip and Charles VII. each under- 
stood the other's rank, and their amity was little interrupted. 
But their successors, the most opposite of human kind in 
character, had one common quality, ambition, to render their 
antipathy more powerful. Louis was eminently timid and 
suspicious in policy ; Charles intrepid beyond all men, and 
blindly presumptuous ; Louis stooped to any humiliation to 
reach his aim ; Charles was too haughty to seek the fairest 
means of strengthening his party. An alliance of his daugh- 
ter with the Duke of Guienne, brother of Louis, was what 
the malcontent French princes most desired and the king 
most dreaded; but Charles, either averse to any French con- 
nection, or willing to keep his daughter's suitors in depend- 
ence, would never directly accede to that or any other 
proposition for her marriage. On Philij)'s death, in 1467, 
he inherited a great treasure, which he soon wasted in the 
prosecution of liis schemes. These were so numerous and 
vast, that he had not time to live, says Comines, to complete 
them, nor would one-half of Eurojie have contented him. It 
was his intention to assume the title of king ; and the em- 
peror Frederick III. was at one time actually on his road to 
confer this dignity, when some suspicion caused him to retire, 
and tlie project was never renewed. It is evident that, if 
Charles's capacity had borne any proportion to liis pride and 
courage, or if a prince less politic than Louis XL had been 
his contemporary in France, the province of Burgundy must 
have been lost to the monarchy. For several years these great 
rivals were engaged, sometimes in open hostility, sometimes 
in endeavors to overreach each other ; but Charles, though not 
much more scrupulous, was far less an adept in these mysteries 
of politics than the king. 

Notwithstanding the power of Burgundy, there were some 
disadvantages in its situation. It presented (I speak of all 
Charles's dominions under the common name, Burgundy) a 
very exposed frontier on the side of Germany and Switzer- 
land, as well as France ; and Louis exerted a considerable 
influence over the adjacent princes of the empire, as well as 
the united Cantons. The people of Liege, a very populous 
city, had for a long time been continually rebelling against 
their bishops, who were the allies of Burgundy ; Louis was 
of course not backward to foment their insxirrections, which 
sometimes gave the dukes a great deal of trouble. The Flem- 
ings, and especially the people of Ghent, had been during a 
century noted for their republican spirit and contumacious 



CO DEATH OF CHARLES THE BOLD. Chap. I. Paut II. 

defiance of their sovereign. Liberty never wore a more im- 
aniiable countenance than among these burghers, who abused 
the strength slie gave them by cruelty and insolence. Ghent 
was absolutely impregnable at a time when artillery was very 
imperfect both in its construction and management. Hence, 
though the citizens of Ghent were generally beaten in the 
field with great slaughter, they obtained tolerable terms from 
their masters, who knew the danger of forcing them to a 
desperate defence. 

An almost uninterrupted success had attended the duke's 
enterprises for a length of time, and rendered his disposition 
still more overweening. His first failure was before Neuss, 
a little town near Cologne (a.d. 1474), the possession of which 
would have made him nearly master of the whole course of 
the Khine, for he had already obtained the landgraviate of 
Alsace. Though compelled to raise the siege, he succeeded 
in occupying, next year, the duchy of Iforraine. But his 
overthrow was reserved for an enemy whom he despised, and 
whom none could have thouglit equal to the contest. The 
Swiss had given him some slight provocation, for which they 
were ready to atone; but Cluirles was unused to forbear; and 
perhaps Switzerland came within his projects of conquest. 
At Granson, in the Fays de Vaud, he was entirely routed, 
with more disgrace than slaughter. But having reassembled 
his troops and met the confederate army of Swiss and Ger- 
mans at Morat, near Friburg, he was again defeated with vast 
loss. On this day the power of Burgundy was dissipated: 
deserted by his allies, betrayed by his mercenaries, he set his 
life u])on another cast at Nancy, desperately giving battle to 
the Duke of Lorraine with a small dispirited army, and 
perished in the engagement (a.d. 1477). 

§ 1(5. Now was the moment when Louis, who had held 
back wlule his enemy was breaking his force against the rocks 
of Switzerland, came to gather a harvest which his labor had 
not reaped. Charles left an only daughter, undoubted heiress 
of Flanders and Artois, as well as of his dominions out of 
France, but whose right of succession to the duchy of Bur- 
gundy was more questionable. Originally the great fief of 
the crown descended to females, and this was the case with 
respect to the two first mentioned. But John had granted 
Burgundy to his son Philip by way of appanage ; and it was 
contended that the appanages reverted to the crown in defaiilt 
of male heirs. In the form of Philip's investiture, the ducliy 
was granted to him and his lawful heirs, without designation 



France. LOUIS XI.— HIS ILLNESS. 61 

of sex. The construction, therefore, must be left to the estab- 
lished course of law. This, however, was by no means ac- 
knowledged by Mary, Charles's daughter, who maintained both 
that no general law restricted appanages to male heirs, and 
that Burgundy had always been considered as a feminine fief, 
John himself having possessed it, not by reversion as king 
(for descendants of the first dukes were then living) but by 
inheritance derived through females. 

There was one obvious mode of preventing all further con- 
test, and of aggrandizing the French monarchy far more than 
by the reunion of Burgundy. This was the marriage of Mary 
with the dauphin, which was ardently wished in France. 
Whatever obstacles might occur to this connection it was nat- 
ural to expect on the o])posite side — from Mary's repugnance to 
an infant husband, or from the jealousy which her sul)jectswere 
likely to entertain of being incorporated with a country worse 
governed than their own. The arts of Louis would have been 
well employed in smoothing these impediments. But he chose 
to seize upon as many towns as, in those critical circumstances, 
lay exposed to him, and strip})ed the young duchess of Artois 
and Franche-comte. Expectations of the marriage he some- 
times held out, but, as it seems, without sincerity. Indeed, he 
contrived irreconcilably to alienate Mary by a shameful perfidy, 
betraying the ministers whom she had intrusted upon a secret 
mission to the people of Ghent, who put them to the torture, 
and afterwards to death, in the presence and amidst the tears 
and supplications of their mistress. Thus the French alliance 
becoming odious in France, this princess married (a.d. 1477) 
Maximilian of Austria, son of the Emperor Frederick — a 
connection which Louis strove to prevent, though it was im- 
possible then to foresee that it was ordained to retard the 
growth of France and to bias the fate of Europe during three 
hundred years. This war lasted till after the death of Mary, 
who left one son, Philip, and one daughter, Margaret. By a 
treaty of ])eace concluded at Arras, in 1482, it was agreed that 
this daughter should become the dauplun's wife, with Franche- 
comte and Artois, which Louis held already, for her dowry, to 
be restored in case the marriage should not take effect. The 
homage of Flanders was reserved to the crown. 

§ 17. Meanwhile Louis was lingering in disease and tor- 
ments of mind, the retribution of fraud and tyranny. Two 
years before his death he was struck with an a])oplexy, from 
wl'icli he never wliolly recovered. As he felt his disorder in- 
creasing, he shut himself up in a palace near Tours, to hide 



62 LOUIS XI. — HIS CHARACTER. Chap. I. Paiit II. 

from the world the knowledge of his decline.^ His solitude 
was like that of Tiberius at Caprete, full of terror and suspi- 
cion, and deep consciousness of universal hatred. All ranks, 
he well knew, had their several injuries to remember : the 
clergy, whose liberties he had sacrificed to the Bee of Rome, 
by revoking the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles VII. ; the 
princes, whose blood he had poured upon the scaffold ; the Par- 
liament, whose course of justice he had turned aside ; the 
commons, who groaned under his extortion, and were plundered 
by his soldiery.^ The palace, fenced with portcullises and 
spikes of iron, was guarded by archers and cross-bow-men, who 
shot at any that approached by night. Few entered this den ; 
but to them he showed himself in magnificent apparel, contrary 
to his former custom, hoping thus to disguise the change of his 
meagre body. He distrusted his friends and kindred, his 
daughter and his son, the last of whom he had not suffered 
even to read or write, lest lie should too soon become his rival. 
No man ever so much feared death, to avert which he stooped 
to every meanness and sought every remedy. His physician 
had sworn that if he were dismissed the king woiild not sur- 
vive a week ; and Louis, enfeebled by sickness and terror, bore 
the rudest usage from this man, and endeavored to secure his 
services by vast rewards. Always credulous in relics, though 
seldom restrained by superstition from any crime, he eagerly 
bought up treasures of this sort, and even procured a Calabrian 
hermit, of noted sanctity, to journey as far as Tours in order 
to restore his health. Philip de Comines, who attended him 
during his infirmity, draws a parallel between the torments he 
then endured and those he had formerly inflicted on others. 
Indeed the whole of his life was vexation of spirit. '' I have 
known him," says Comines, " and been his servant in the 
flower of his age, and in the time of his greatest prosperity ; 
but never did I see him Avithout uneasiness and care. Of all 
amusements he loved only the chase, and hawking in its sea- 
son. And in this he had almost as much xmeasiness as pleasure ; 
for he rode hard and got up early, and sometimes went a great 
way, and regarded no weather ; so that he used to return very 
weary, and almost ever in wrath with some one. I think that 

8 Plessis, his last residence, about an English mile from Tours, is now a dilapidated 
farm-house, and can never have been a very large building. The vestiges of royalty 
about it are few ; but the principal apartrnents have been destroyed, either iii the 
course of ages or at tlie revolution. 

'J See !i remarkable chapter in riiilip de Comines, 1. iv. c. 19, wherein he tells us that 
Charles VII. had never raised more than 1,800,000 francs a year in taxes ; but Louis 
XI. at the time of his death, raised 4,700,000, exclusive of some military impositions; 
et suremeut c'estoit compassion de voir et scavoir la pauvrete du peuple. 



France. AFFAIRS OF BRITTANY. 63 

from his childhood he never had any respite of labor and 
trouble to his death. And I am certain that if all the happy 
days of his life, in which he had more enjoyment than uneasi- 
ness, were numbered, they would be found very few ; and at 
least that they would be twenty of sorrow for every one of 
pleasure." 

§ 18. Charles VIII. was about thirteen years old when he 
succeeded his father Louis (a.d. 1483). Though the law of 
France fixed the majority of her kings at that age, yet it 
seems not to have been strictly regarded on this occasion, and 
at least Charles was a minor by nature, if not by law. A con- 
test arose, therefore, for the regency, which Louis had intrusted 
to his daughter Anne, Avife of the Lord de Beaujeu, one of the 
Bourbon family. The Duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis XIL, 
claimed it as presumptive heir of the crown, and was seconded 
by most of the princes. Anne, however, maintained her ground, 
and ruled France for several years in her brother's name with 
singular spirit and address, in spite of the rebellions which the 
Orleans party raised up against her. These were supported by 
the Duke of Brittany, the last of the great vassals of the crown, 
whose daughter, as he had no male issue, was the object of as 
many suitors as Mary of Burgundy. 

The duchy of Brittany was peculiarly circumstanced. The 
inhabitants, whether sprung from the ancient republicans of 
Armorica, or, as some have thought, from an emigration of 
Britons during the Saxon invasion, had not originally belonged 
to the body of the French monarchy. They were governed by 
their own princes and laws, though tributary, perhaps, as the 
weaker to the stronger, to the Merovingian kings. In the 
ninth century the dukes of Brittany did homage to Charles 
the Bold, the right of which was transferred afterwards to 
the dukes of iSTormandy. This formality, at that time no token 
of real subjection, l<^d to consequences beyond the views of 
either party. For when the feudal chains that had liung so 
loosely upon the shoulders of the great vassals began to be 
straightened by the dexterity of the court, Brittany found 
itself drawn among the rest to the same centre. The old privi- 
leges of independence were treated as usurpation; the dukes 
were menaced with confiscation of their fief, their right of 
coining money disputed, their jurisdiction impaired by appeals 
to the Parliament of Paris, However, they stood boldly upon 
their right, and always refused to pay liege homage, which 
implied an obligation of service to the lord, in contradistinc- 
tion to simple homage, which was a mere symbol of feudal 



64 THE FRENCH MONARCHY. Chap. I. Part II. 

dependence. In Francis II., the fhen duke, the male line of that 
family Avas about to be extinguished. His daughter Anne was 
naturally the object of many suitors, and was at length mar- 
ried by proxy to Maximilian, king of the Komans (a.d. 1489). 
But France was resolved at all events to break off so dangerous 
a connection. And as IMaximilian himself was unable, or took 
not sufficient pains, to relieve Ins betrotlied wife from her em- 
barrassments, she Avas ultimately compelled to accept the hand 
of Charles VIII. He had long been engaged by the treaty of 
Arras to marry the daughter of Maximilian, and that princess 
was educated at the French court. But this engagement had 
not prevented several years of hostilities, and continual in- 
trigues with the towns of Flanders against Maximilian. The 
double injury which the latter sustained in the marriage of 
Charles with the heiress of Brittany seemed likely to excite a 
protracted contest; but the King of France, who had other 
objects in vicAv, and perhaps was conscious that he had not 
acted a fair part, soon came to an accommodation, by which he 
restored Artois and Franche-comte. Both these provinces had 
revolted to Maximilian ; so that Charles must have continued 
the Avar at some disadvantage (a.d. 1492). 

France Avas noAV consolidated into a great kingdom: the 
feudal system was at an end. The vigor of Bliilip Augustus, 
the paternal Avisdom of St. Loiiis, the policy of Philip the 
Fair, had laid the foundations of a poAverfid monarchy, Avhich 
neither the arms of England, nor seditions of Paris, nor re- 
bellions of the princes, Avere able to shake. Besides the origi- 
nal tiefs of the French crown, it had acquired tAvo countries 
beyond the Rhone, which properly depended only upon the 
empire — Dauphine, under Philip of Valois, by the bequest of 
Humbert, tlie last of its princes ; and Provence, under Louis 
XI., by that of Charles of Anjou.^" Thus having conquered 
herself, if I may use the phrase, and no longer apprehensive 
of any foreign enemy, France Avas prepared, under a monarch 
flushed with sanguine and)ition, to carry her arms into other 
countries, and to contest the ])rize of glory and pOAver upon 
the am})le theatre of Europe." 

1" Tlic (•ountry now crillcd Oatipliiiic' formefl part of the kingdom of Arlos or Pro- 
vence, l)i'ijiie;itlii(l hy Uodoliih III. to tluM'niporor, Conrad I. But tlic dominion of 
the empire over tliese new aciiuisitions l)eing little more tlian nominal, a few of the 
chief nobility converteil tlnir resijcelive fiefs into independent pvineipalities. One 
of these was the lord or dauphin of Vicnne, whose family became ulfimately masters 
of the whole province, rrovenee, like Dauphine, waschanged from afeudal depend- 
ency to a sovereignty, in the weakness and dissolution of the kingdom of Aries, about 
the early part of the eleventh century. 

!• See NoTi'; IX., " Authorities for French History." 



NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 



65 



NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 



I. THE ARJIORICAN REPUBLIC. 

The existence of an Armorican Kepub- 
lic is now admitted by most French his- 
torians. Early in tlie fiftli century, ac- 
cording to Zosinuis (vi. 5), about the 
time when Constantine usurped tlie tlirone 
of Britain and Gaul, or, as the sense 
shows, a little later, in consequence of 
the incursions of the barbarians from be- 
yond the Rhine, the natives of Britain, 
taking up arms for themselves, rescueil 
their cities from these baibarians; and 
the whole Armorican territory, and otlier 
provinces of Gaul, in imitation of the 
Britons, liberated themselves in the same 
manner, expelling the Roman rulers, and 
establishing an internal government. 
Martin considers tliat this confederation 
extended as far as Aquitaine, and em- 
braced some cities of the central provinces, 
as well as Armorica proper. — (" Histoire 
de France," vol. i. p. 339.) 

II. THE FRANKS. 

The Franks are not among the German 
tribes mentioned by Tacitus, nor do they 
appear in history before the year 240. 
They were probably a confederation of 
the tribes situa'ted between tlie Rhine, the 
AVeser, and the Main; as the Alemanni 
were a similar league to the south of the 
last river. Their origin may be derived 
from the necessity of defemling their in- 
dependence against Rome; but tliey had 
become the aggressors in the jieriod when 
we read of them in Roman history; and, 
like other Inirhariaiis in that age, were 
often the purchased allies of the declining 
empire. M. Lehuerou conceives them to 
have been a race of exiles or outlaws from 
other German tribes, taking the name 
Franc from fircli, fierce or bold, and set- 
tling at first, by necessity, near the month 
of the En)e, wlience they moved onward 
to seek better habitation's at the expense 
of less intrepid, though more civilized, na- 
tions. — (" Institutions Merovingiennes," 
vol. i. p. 91.) 

Although the Prankish tribes were 
nominally independetit of each other, each 
possessing its own chieftain, yet in pro- 
cess of time a certain predominance was 
acquired by one or two overthe rest. The 
warlike Snlians, who towards the close of 
the third century obtained a fixed settle- 
ment in the north of Gaul, became, in 
consequence of this success and other ad- 
vantages, the dominant tribe; and it was 
from one of their families, that of the 
Me.rominiis or children of Merowig, that 
the confederation chose its military lead- 
ers, as occasion arose. Such is the ori- 
gin of what is commonly called the Mero- 
vingian line of kings. 



III. THE CONSULSHIP OF CLOVIS. 

The theory of Dubos, who considers 
Clovis as a sort of lieutenant of the em- 
peror's, and as governing the Roman part 
of his subjects by no other title, is partly 
counteiKinced by (iibbon, and has been 
revived, in almost its fullest extent, by a 
learned and spirited investigator of early 
history. Sir Francis Palgrave, in his " Rise 
and I'rogress of the English Common- 
wealth," i. 300. The truth seems to be 
that the investiture of Clovis with the 
consular dignity by the Eastern emperor, 
although it added nothing to his real pow- 
er, was a fortunate circumstance of which 
the coiKiueror gladly took advantage to 
ratify and consolidate his already ac- 
quired sovereignty. It is plain, from the 
account given by Gregory of Tours, that 
both Clovis himself and his subjects, bar- 
barian and Roman, attached considerable 
importance to the fact. M. I-,chuc'ron, in 
his " Institutions Merovingiennes," ar- 
rives at the following conclusions; 'J'liat 
the definitive establishment of theFianks 
in Roman Gaul resulted at the same time 
from the voluntary concessions of the 
emperors and from their violent aggres- 
sions. That the Merovingians reigned 
I)artly by legitimate .succession and partly 
by right of conquest. That Clovis, whose 
reign did not comnience till after the fall 
of the Western Empire, nevertheless rec- 
ognized, like the Visigoths of Sj)ain, the 
Cstrogoths of Italy, and the liuignndians 
of Gaul, the superiority, and up to a cer- 
tain point the siizcrttiiisliip, of the em- 
perors of the East. That the Gallo-Ro- 
man pro\'incials coincided in this view, 
and that consequently their acipiiescence 
in the government of Clovis became more 
willing and more complete from the mo- 
nient of his nomination as f^onsnl and 
Patrician, acknowledged dignities of the 
ancient empire. Lastly, that, long after 
Clovis and his posterity had become inde- 
pendent masters of Gaiil, the Merovingian 
princes looked upon \ln' Eastern emper- 
ors as their xiiperiors, and addressed 
them, when occasion ar<ise, in terms ex- 
pressive of this relationship. 

IV. THE MAYOR OF THE PALACE. 

The Mayor of the Palace appears as the 
first oHicer of the crown in the three 
Frank kingdoms during the latter half of 
the sixth century. He had the conmiand, 
as Guizot supposes, of the Antrustions, 
or vassals of the king. Even afterwards 
the office was not, as this writer believes, 
projieily elective, though in the case of 
a minority of the king, or upon other spe- 
cial occasions, the Icudes, or nobles, chose 
a mayor. The first instance we find of 



66 



NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 



such an election was in 575, when, after 
the murder of Sigebert by Fredegoude, 
his sou Childebert being an infant, the 
Austrasian leadts cliose Gogon for their 
mayor. There seem, liowever, so many 
instances of elective mayors in tlie seventh 
century, that although the royal consent 
may probably have been legally requisite, 
it is hard to doubt tliat the office had fall- 
en into the hands of the nobles. 

V. AQUITAINE. 

Aribert, or rather Caribert, brother of 
Dagobert I., was declared king of Aqui 
taine in 028 ; but on his death, in 631, it 
became a duchy dependent on the mon- 
archy under his two sons, with its capital 
at Toulouse. This dependence, liowever, 
appears to have soon ceased, in the decay 
of the Merovingian line; and for a centu- 
ry afterwards Aquitaine can hardly be 
considered as part of either the Neustriau 
or Austrasian kingdom. Aquitaine, in its 
fullest extent, extended from the Loire 
beyond the Garonne, with the exception 
of Touraine and the Orleannois. The 
people of Aquitaine, in this large sense 
of the word, were chietly Romans, with a 
few Goths, The Franks, as a conquering 
nation, had scarcely taken up their abode 
in these provinces. After the battle of 
Testry, which subverted the Neustrian 
monarchy, Aquitaine, and even Burgun- 
dy, ceased for a time to be French ; under 
(;harles Martel they were styled the Ro- 
man countries. (Michelet, ii'. 9.) Eudon, 
by some called Elides, grandson of Cari- 
bert, a prince of conspicuous <iualities, 
gained ground upon tlie Franks during 
the whole period of Pepin Heristal's pow- 
er, and united to Aquitaine not only I'ro- 
vence, but a new conquest from the inde- 
pendent natives, Gascony. Eiudon ob- 
tained in 7:l\ a far greater victory over the 
Saracens than that of Charles Martel at 
Poitiers. The slaughter was immense, 
and confessed by the Arabian writers; it 
even appears that a funeral solemnity, in 
commemoration of so great a calamity, 
was observed in Spain for four or five cen- 
turies afterwards. (Fauriel, iii. 79.) But 
in its conse(juences it was far less impor- 
tant; for the Saracens, some years after- 
wards, returned to avenge their country- 
men, and Eudon had no resource but in 
the aid of Charles .Martel. After the re- 
treat of the enemy it became the neces- 
sary price of the service rendere<l by the 
Frank chieftain that Aquitaine acknowl- 
edged his sovereignty. Tliis, however, 
was still but nominal, till Pepin deter- 
mined to assert it more seriously, and af- 
ter a long war overcame the last of the 
ducal line sprung from Clotaire II., which 
had displayed, for almost a century and a 
half, an energy in contrast with the im- 
becility of the elder branch. Even this, 
as iM.' Fauriel observes, was little more 
than a change in the reigning family ; the 



men of Aquitaine never lost theirpeculiar 
nationality ; they remained a separate 
people in Gaul, a people distinguished by 
their character, and by the part which 
they were called to play in the political 
revolutions of the age. 

VI. THE SUBJECTION OF THE SAXONS. 

The true cause, M. Michelet observes 
(" Hist, de France," ii. ay) of the Sa.xon 
wars, which had begun under Charles 
Martel and were in some degree defensive 
on the part of the Franks, was the an- 
cient antipathy of race, enhanced by the 
growing tendency to civilized habits 
among the latter. This, indeed, seems 
sufficient to account for the conflict, with- 
out any national antipathy. It was that 
which makes the Red Indian perceive an 
enemy in the Anglo-American, and the 
Australian savage in the Englishman. The 
Saxons, in their deep forests and scantily 
cultivated plains, could not bear lixed 
boundaries of laud. Tlieir (/au was indef- 
inite : the »7i'r?i.s'(ts was certain; it annihi- 
lated the barbarian's only method of com- 
bining liberty with possession of land — 
the right of shifting his occupancy. It is 
not probable, from subsequent events, 
that the Saxons held very tenaciously by 
their religion; but when Christianity first 
oftered itself, it came in the train of a 
conqueror. Nor could Christianity, ac 
cording at least to tlie ecclesiastical sys- 
tem, lie made compatible with such a 
state of society as the German in that 
age. Hence the Saxons endeavored to 
burn the first churches, thus drawing re- 
taliation on their own idols. 

The first apostles of Germany were En- 
glish ; and of these the most remarkable 
was St. Boniface. But this had been in 
the time of Charles Martel and Pepin. 
The labors of these missionaries were 
chiefly in Thuringia, Franconia, and Ba- 
varia, and were rewarded with great suc- 
cess. But we may here consider them 
only in their results on the Frank mon- 
archy. Those parts of Germany had long 
been subject to Austrasia, but, except so 
far as they furnished troops, scarcely form- 
ed an integrant portion of that kingdom. 
The subjection of a heathen tribe is total- 
ly ditterent from that of a Christian prov- 
ince. With the Church came churches, 
and for churches there must be towns, and 
for towns a magistracy, and for magistra- 
cy law and the means of enforcing it. 
How different was the condition of Ba- 
varia or Hesse in the ninth century from 
that of the same countries in the seventh! 
Not outlying appendages to the Austrasian 
monarchy, hardly counted among its sub- 
jects, but capable of standing by them- 
selves, as co-ordinate members of the 
empire, an equipoise to France herself, 
full of populous towns, wealthy nobles 
and prelates, better organized and more 
flourishing states than their neighbors 



NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 



67 



on the left side of the Rhine. Charle- 
mague founded eight bislioprics in .•sax- 
ony, mid distributed tlie country into 
dioceses. 

Vir. CHARLEMAGNE, EMPEROR. 

The motive of Charlemagne in accept- 
ing the title of emperor has been much 
discussed. It is contended by Sir P. Tal- 
grave that Cliarlemagne was chosen by 
the Romans as lawful successor of Cou- 
stantine V., whom his mother Irene had 
dethroned in 79.5, the usage of the empire 
having never adnntted a female sovereign. 
But it remains to be shown by what right 
Leo III., cum omiii Cliristkino populo — 
that is, the priests and populace of degen- 
erate Rome — could dispose of the entire 
empire, or effect to place a stranger on 
the throne of Constantinople ; for if 
Charles were the successor of Constan- 
tino v., we must draw this conclusion. 
Rome, we should keep to mind, was not a 
jot more invested with authority than any 
other city ; the- Greek capital liad long 
taken her place ; and in every revolution 
of new Rome, the decrepit mother had 
witliout hesitation obeyed. Nor does it 
seem to me exceedingly material, if the 
case be sucli, that Charlemagne was not 
styled Emperor of the West, or successor 
of Augustulus. It is evident that his 
empire, relatively to that of the Greeks, 
was western ; and we do not find that 
either he or his family ever claimed an 
exclusive right to the imperial title. The 
pretension would have been diametrically 
opposed both to prescriptive right and 
actual possession. He wrote to the Em- 
peror Nicephorus, successor of Irene, as 
fraternila's vestra ; but it is believed 
that the Greeks never recognized the ti- 
tle of a western barbarian. Mr. Hallam 
thinks that tlie probable design of Charle- 
magne, in accepting the title of emperor, 
was not only to extend his power as far as 
possible in Italy, but to invest it with a 
sort of sacredness and prescriptive dig- 
nity in the eyes of his barbarian subjects. 
These had been accustomed to hear of 
emperors as something superior to kings ; 
they were themselves fond of pompous ti- 
tles, and the chancery of the new Augus- 
tus soon borrowed the splendid ■ cere- 
monial of the Byzantine court. But the 
real motive of (Charlemagne in accepting 
the title of emperor has been more cor- 
rectly appreciated by Mr. Maine in liis 
work on •'Ancient Law" (pp. 10.3-107). 
The conception of "territorial sover- 
eignty" was at that time unknown, and, 
when the descendants of Clovis aspired 
to be something more than kings of the 
Franks, the only precedent whicli sug- 
gested itself was the title of Emperors of 
Rome. " The world had lain for so many 
centuries under the shadow of Imperial 
Rome as to have forgotten that distribu- 
tion of the vast spaces comprised in the 



empire wtuch had once parcelled them 
out into a number of independent com- 
monwealths, claiming imnmnity from ex- 
trinsic interference, and pretending to 
equality of national rights. After the 
subsidence of the barbarian irruptions, 
the notion of sovereignty that prevailed 
seems to have been twofold. On the one 
hand, it assumed the form of what may 
be called ' tribe sovereignty.' I'art of 
Transalpine Gaul, with part of Germany, 
had now become the country de facto 
occu|)ied by the Franks — it was France ; 
but the Merovingian line of chieftains, the 
descendants of Clovis, were not kings of 
France — they were kings of the Franks, 
riie alternative to this peculiar notion of 
sovereignty appears to have been — and 
this is the important point — the idea of 
universal dominion. The moment a mon- 
arch departed from the special relation of 
chief to clansmen, and became solicitous, 
for purposes of his own, to invest him- 
self with a novel form of sovereignty, the 
only precedent which suggested itself for 
his adoption was the domination of the 
empeiois of Rome. To parody a common 
quotation, he became ' aut Ciesdr aut nut- 
Iks.'' The chieftain who woukl no longer 
call himself king of the tribe must claim 
to be emperor of the world. Thus, when 
the hereditary Mayors of the Palace had 
ceased to compromise with the monarchs 
they had long since virtually dethroned, 
they soon became unwilling to call them- 
selves kings of the Franks — a title which 
belonged to the displaced Merovings ; but 
they could not style themselves kings of 
France, for such a designation, though 
apparently not unknown, was not a title 
of dignity. Accordingly they came for- 
ward as aspirants to universal empire. 
Territorial sovereignty — the view which 
connects sovereignty with the jiossession 
of a limited porticm of the earth's surface 
— was distinctly an offshoot, though a 
tardy one, oi feudalism." " 

VIII. THE KINOnOM OF BITROUNPY. 

It is important for the student to bear 
in mind the ditl'erent uses of the name 
Burgundy in ditl'erent ages. 5Ir. Bryce 
has pointed out the ten senses in which 
the name generally occurs : — 

" I. The kingdom of the Burgundians 
{regnum litirgundionum), founded A.n. 
40(), occupying the whole valley of the 
Saone and lower Rhone, from Dijon to the 
Mediterranean, and including also the 
western half of Switzerland. It was de- 
stroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.n. 5.'!4. 

" il. The kingdom of MxxTgwnAy {regnnm 
Biirgu)idi(e), mentioned occasionally un- 
der the Merovingian kings as a separate 
princiiiality, confined within boundaries 
apparently somewhat narrower than those 
of the older kingdom last named. 

" III. The kingdom of Provence or Bur- 
gundy {regnum Provinciw seu Burgundiie) 



68 



NOTES TO CHAPTER I. 



— also, though less accurately, called the 
kingdom of Cis-Jurane Burgundy — was 
founded by Boso in A. I). 877, and included 
Provence, Dauphine, the southern jiart of 
Savoy, and the country between the Saone 
and the Jura. 

" ' IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane 
Burgundy {regiium. lurense, Burgumlia 
Trnnsiurenslis), founded by Rudolph in 
A.I). 888, recognized in tlie same yenrby 
the Emperor Ariiulf, included the nortli- 
erii part of savoy, and all Switzerland 
between the Keuss and the Jura. 

" v. The kingdom of Burgundv or 
Aries {re.gnum DurgundiK, regnum Ai'ela- 
tense), formed by tlie union, under Con- 
rad the Pacific, in A.n. 937, o the 
kingdoms described above as III. and IV. 
On tlie deatli, in lO.tt, of the last inde- 
pendent king, Rudolph III., it came 
partly by bequest, partly by conquest, into 
the hands of the Emperor Conrad II. (the 
Salic), and thenceforward formed a part 
of the Empire. In tlie tliirteenth century, 
France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and 
has now (since the annexation of Savoy 
in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss 
portion of it. 

" VI. The Lesser Duchy {Burgundia 
Minor), (Klein Burgund), corresponded 
very nearly with what is now Switzerland 
west of the lieuss, including tlie Valais. 
It was Traus-.Iurane Burgundy (IV.) 
mhiusi the parts of Savoy which hail be- 
longed to that kingdom. It disappears 
from liistory after the extinction of the 
house of Zahringen in the thirteenth cen- 
tury. Ijegally it was ])art of tlie Empire 
till A.n. KHS, though practically inde- 
pendent long before tliat date. 

" VII. The Free ('ounty or Palatinate 
of Burgundy (Franche Comte), (Freigraf- 
scliaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to 
which the name of Cis-Jurane liurgundy 
originally and proixrly belonged, lay be- 
tween tlie Saoiii- and tlie .Jura. It formed 
a part of III. and V., and was therefore a 
fief of the Empire. The French dukes of 
Burgundy were invested with it in A.n. 
n.s4, and in l(!7iS it was annexed to the 
Crown of France. 

"VIII. Tlie Ijandgraviatc of Burgundy 
(Landgrafschaft) was in Western Switzer- 
land, on both sides of the Aar, between 
Thun and Solothurn. It was a part of tho 



Lesser Duchy (VI.), and, like it, is hardly 
mentioned after the thirteenth centurv. 

" IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis 
Burgund), an administrative division of 
the Empire, was established by Charles V. 
in IJiS ; ami included the Free County of 
Burgundy (VII.) and the seventeen prov- 
inces of the Netherlands, which Charles 
inherited from his grandmother Mary, 
daughter of Charles tlie Bold. 

" X. The duchy of Burgundy (Lower 
Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most north- 
erly part" of the old kingdom of the Bur- 
guhdians, was always a fief of the crown 
of France, and a province of France till 
the Revolution. It, was of this Burgundv 
that Philip the Good and Charles the Bold 
were dukes. They were also counts of 
the Free County ( VII.)" — " The Holy Ro- 
man Empire," pp. 437-439. 



IX. AUTIIOKITIK.S I'^OR I'RUXCII HISTORY. 

The history of France by Velly, Villaret, 
and Gamier, was tlie principal' authority 
originally used by Mr. Hallani for this 
chapter, exclusive of original writers. 
The part of the Abb6 Velly conies down 
to the middle of the eighth' volume (I'Jmo 
edition), and of the reign of Philip de 
Valois.' His continuator, Villaret, was 
interrnptfd by death in the seventeenth 
volume, and in the reign of Louis XL 
Suhse(jUintly i\!r. Ilallam observed that 
"this history is but slightly esteemed in 
France, especially tlu' volmnes written by 
the Abbe Velly. The writers were too 
much imbued with the si)irit of the old 
monarchy (though no adulators of kings, 
and r.ithcr liberal according to the stand- 
ard of their own agio for fiiose who have 
taken the sovereignty of the iicujile for 
their cr<'ed. Nor are they critical and 
exact enough for the present state of 
historical knowledge. Sismondi and 
Michelet, esjjeeially the former, are 
doubtless superior; but the reader will 
not tind in the latter as regular a narra- 
tion of fiK^ts as ill Velly and N'illaret. 
Sismondi has as many prejudices on one 
side as they have on the opposite." But 
the histories of Sismondi and Michelet 
are in their turn now superseded to a 
great extent by that of H. Martiu. 



Feudai. System. STATE OF ANCIENT GERMANY. 69 



CHAPTER II. 

ON THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, ESPECIALLY IN FRANCE. 
PART I. 

§ 1. State of Ancient Germany. § 2. Effects of the Conquest of Gaul by the Franks. 
§3. Tenures of Land. §4. Roman Natives of Gaul. §5. Proportiiin of Franks 
and Ronian.^*. § fi. Distinction of Laws. §7. Constitution of the Ancient Frank 
Monarcliy. § 8. Origin of Nobility. ^ 9. Gradual Establishment of Feudal Ten- 
ures. §10. Principles of a Feudal Relation. § 11. Ceremoniesofllonia,£;e, Fealty, 
and Investiture. § 12. Obligations of a Vassal. Military Service. § i:S. Feudal In- 
cidents of Relief, Fines, Escheats, Aids, Wardship, Alarriage. § 14. Diflerent Spe- 
cies of Fiefs. § 15. Feudal Law-books. 

§ 1. Germany, in the age of Tacitus, was divided a,mong a 
number of independent tribes, differing greatly in population 
and importance. Their country, overspread with forests and 
morasses, afforded no large proportion of aral)le laud. Nor 
did they ever occupy the same land two years in succession, 
if what CaBsar tells us may be believed, that fresh allotments 
were annually made by the magistrates. I>ut this could not 
have been an absolute al)andonment of land once cultivated, 
which Horace ascribes to the migratory Scythians. The 
Germans had fixed though not contiguous dwellings, and 
the inhabitants, of the gau or township must have continued 
to till the same fields, though it might be with varying rights 
of separate property. They had kings elected out of partic- 
ular families ; and other chiefs, both for war and administra- 
tion of justice, whom merit alone recommended to the public 
choice. But the power of each was greatly limited ; and the 
decision of all leading questions, though subject to the previ- 
ous deliberations of the chieftains, sprung from the free voice 
of a popular assembly. The principal men, however, of a 
German tribe fully partook of tliat estimation which is always 
the reward of valor, and commonly of birth. I'hey were sur- 
rounded by a cluster of youths, the most gallant and ambitious 
of tlie nation, their pride at home, their protection in the field ; 
whose ambition was flattered, or gratitude conciliated, by such 
presents as a leader of barl)arians could confer. These were 
the institutions of the people who overtlu-ew the empire of 



TO PARTITION OF CONQUESTS. Chap. II. Paet I. 

Rome, congenial to the spirit of infant societies, and such as 
travellers have found among nations in the same stage of 
manners throughout the world. And although, in the lapse 
of four centuries between the ages of Tacitus and Clovis, some 
change Avas wrought by long intercourse with the Romans, yet 
the foundations of their political system were unshaken. If 
the Salic laws were in the main drawn up before the occupa- 
tion of Gaul b}^ the Franks, as seems the better opinion, it is 
manifest that lands were held by them in determinate several 
possession: and in other respects it is impossible that the 
manners described by Tacitus should not have imdergone some 
alteration. 

§ 2. When these tribes from Germany and the neighboring 
countries poured down upon the empire, and began to forjn 
permanent settlements, they made a partition of the lands in 
the conquered provinces between themselves and the original 
possessors. Tlie Burgimdians and Visigoths took two-thirds 
of their respective conquests, leaving the remainder to the 
Roman proprietor. Each Burguudian Avas quartered, under 
the gentle name of guest (hospes), upon one of the former ten- 
ants, whose reluctant hospitality confined him to the smaller 
portion of his estate. The Vandals in Africa, a more furious 
race of plunderers, seized all the best lands. The Lombards 
of Italy took a third part of the produce. We cannot discover 
any mention of a similar arrangement in the laAvs or history 
of the Franks. It is, hoAvever, clear that they occupied, by 
public allotment or individual pillage, a great portion of the 
lands of France. 

§ 3. The estates possessed by the Franks as their property 
were termed allodial ; a AA^ord which is sometimes restricted to 
such as had descended by inheritance.^ These Avere subject 
to no burden except that of pidjlic defence. They passed to 
all the children equally, or, in their failure, to the nearest 
kindred. But of these allodial possessions there was a partic- 

' Allodi.il lands are commonly opposed to beneficiary or feudal; the former being 
stricLly proprietary, while the latter depended upon a superior. In this sense tlie 
word is of continual recurrence in ancient histories, laws, and instruments. It some- 
times, however, bears the sense of inheritance. Hence, in the charters of the eleventh 
century, hereditary tiefs are frequently termed allodia. The word allod or alod, in 
Latin aloi/is, in Freiieli nlleu, is of uncertain etymology. It has usually been thought 
to be conii)()unded <it all and o(fh, and would thus signify full or entire property; but 
MM. Guizot, Ijeliuerou,and otlier writers, derive it from the Teutonic toos, sors. The 
word sors, when ajiplied to land means only auintegral patrimony, as it means capi- 
tal opposed to interest when applied to money. It is common in the civil law, and is 
no more than the Creek /cAripos; but it had been peculiarly applied to the lands as- 
signed by the Romans to the soldiery after a conquest, which some suppose to have 
been by lot. And hence tins term was most probably adopted by the barbarians, or 
rather those who rendered their laws into Latin. 



Feudal Systkm. ROMAN NATIVES OF GAUL. 71 

iilar species, denominated Salic, from which females were ex- 
pressly excluded. AVliat these lands were, and what was the 
cause of the exclusion, has been much disputed. No solution 
seems more probable than that the ancient lawgivers of the 
Salian Franks prohibited females from inheriting lands assigned 
to the nation upon the conquest of Gaul, both in compliance 
with their ancient usages, and in order- to secure the military 
service of every proprietor. But lands subsequently acquired 
by purchase or other means, though equally bound to the pub- 
lic defence, were relieved from the severity of this rule, and 
presumed not to belong to the class of Salic. '^ 

§ 4. A controversy has been maintained in France as to the 
condition of the Romans, or rather the provincial inhabitants 
of Gaul,^ after the invasion of Clovis. While some bring the 
two nations, conquerors and conquered, almost to an equality, 
as the common subjects of a sovereign who had assumed the 
prerogatives of a Roman eni])eror ; otliers find no closer anal- 
ogy for their relative conditions than that of the Greeks and 
Turks in the days that have lately gone by. But it seems im- 
possible to maintain either of these two theories. On the one 
hand, we find the Romans not only possessed of property, and 
governed by their own laws, but admitted to the royal favor , 
and the highest offices ; while the bishops and clergy, who 
were generally of that nation, grew up continually in popular 
estimation, in. riches and in temporal sway. Yet a marked 
line was drawn at the outset between the conquerors and the 
conquered. Though one class of Romans retained estates of 
their OAvn, yet there was another, called tributary, who seem to 
have cultivated those of the Franks, and Avere scarcely raised 
above the condition of predial servitude. But no distinction 
can be more unequivocal than that Avhich was established be- 
tween the two nations, in the wevegild, or composition for 
homicide. Capital punishment for murder was contrary to the 
spirit of the Franks, who, like most barbarous nations, would 
have thought the loss of one citizen ill repaired by that of 
another. The weregild was paid to the relations of tlie slain, 
according to a legal rate. This was fixed by tlie Salic law at 
600 solidi for an Antrustioii of the king ; at 300 for a Roman 
conviva retjis (a man who had been admitted to the royal 
table) ; at 200 for a common Frank ; at 100 for a Roman pos- 
sessor of lands ; and at 45 for a tributary, or cultivator of 

2 See Note I., " On the Salic aud other Laws of the Barbarians." 

3 It must be recollected that in the barbarian laws the word Roman is uniformly 
applied to the provincialinliabitauts of Gaul. 



72 KOMAN NATIVES OF GAUL. Chap. II. Paiit I. 

another's property. One essential difference separated tiie 
Frank from the llonian. The latter was subject to personal 
and territorial taxation. 

§ 5. It cannot be too frequently inculcated on the reader 
who desires to form a general but tolerably exact notion of the 
state of France under the first line of kings, that he is not 
hastily to draw inferences from one of the three divisions, 
Austrasia, Neustria, and Aquitaine, to which, for a part of the 
period, we must add Burgundy, to the rest. The difference of 
language, though not always decisive, furnishes a presumption 
of different origin. We may therefore estimate, with some 
probability, the proportion of Franks settled in the monarchy 
on the left bank of the Rhine, by the extent of country wherein 
the Teutonic language is spoken. The French or Walloon 
followed in that early age the irregular line which, running 
from Calais and 8t. Omer to Lisle and Tournay, stretches north 
of tlie Meuse as far as Liege, and, bending thence to the south- 
westward, i)asses through Longwy to Metz. These towns 
speak French, and spoke it under Charlemagne, if we can say 
that under Charlemagne French was spoken anywhere ; at least 
they spoke a dialect of Latin origin. The exceptions are few ; 
but where they exist, it is from the progress of French rather 
than the contrary. 

Tiie most remarkable evidence for the duration of the limit 
is the act of partition between Lothaire of Lorraine and Charles 
the Bald, in 870, whence it appears that the names of places 
where French is now spoken were then French. N"othing, says 
M. Michelet, can be more French than the Walloon country.^ 
He expatiates almost with enthusiasm on the praise of tliis 
people, who seem to have retained a large share of his favorite 
Celtic element. It appears that the result of an investigation 
into the languages on tlie Alsatian frontier would be much the 
same. Here, therefore, we have a very reasonable presumjjtion . 
that the forefathers of the Flemish Belgians, as well as of the 
people of Alsace, were barbarians : some of the former may 
be sprung from Saxon colonies planted in Brabant by Charle- 
magne ; but we may derive the majority from Salian and Rip- 
uarian Franks. These were the strength of Austrasia, and 
among these the great restorer, or rather founder, of the 
empire fixed his capital at Aix-la-Chapelle. 

In Aquitaine, on the other hand, every thing appears Roman, 
in contradistinction to Frank, except the reigning family. The 
chief difficulty, therefore, concerns ISTeustria; that is, from the 

1 " Hist, de France," viii., 287. 



FiiuoAL Kystem. distinction OF LAWS. 73 

Scheldt, or, })erliaps, the Somme, to the Loire ; and to this im- 
portant kingdom the advocates of the two nations, Roman and 
Frank, lay claim. M. Thierry has paid much attention to the 
subject, and come to the conclusion that, in the seventh cen- 
tury, the number of Frank land-liolders, from the Rhine to tlie 
Loire, much exceeded that of the Roman. And this excess he 
takes to have been increased tlirougli the seizure of church 
lands in the next age by Charles Martel, Avho bestowed them 
on his German troops enlisted beyond the Rhine. ^ 

We may, therefore, conclude tliat the Franks, even in the 
reign of Clovis, were rather a numerous people — including, of 
course, the Rij)uarian as well as the Salian tribe. They 
certainly appear in great strength soon afterwards. 

§ (). The barbarous con(]^uerors of Gaul and Italy were 
guided by notions very different from those of Rome, who had 
imj)osed her own laws upon all the subjects of her em[)ire. 
Adliering in general to their ancient customs, without desire 
of improvement, tliey left the former inhabitants in unmolested 
enjoyment of their civil institutions. The Frank was judged 
by the Salic or the Ripuary code : the Gaul followed that of 
Theodosius. This grand distinction of Roman and barbarian, 
according to the law which each followed, was common to the 
Frank, Burgundian, and Lombard kingdoms. The name of 
Gaul or Roman was not entirely lost in that of Frenchman, 
nor had the separation of their laws ceased, even in the prov- 
inces north of the Loire, till after the time of Charlemagne. 
Ultimately, however, the feudal customs of succession, which 
depended upon ])rinciples quite remote from those of the civil 
law, and the rights of territorial justice which the barons came 
to ])ossess, contributed to extirpate the Roman jurisprudence 
in that part of France. But in tlie south, from whatever cause, 
it survived the revolutions of the Middle Ages ; and thus arose 
a leading division of that kingdom into pa'js coutumiers and 
■]Kii/s (lit droi ecrit ; the former regulated by a vast variety of 

•I The inetli(«i wliioh Tliierry has pursued, in order to ascertain this, is incenions 
and prcsuinptivelv ritrlit. He remarked tliat tlie names of the jthices will often indi- 
cate whether the iMluiliitants, or more often the chief i)roprietor, were of Roman or 
Teutonic orisrin. Thus Franconville and Ilomainville, near Paris, are distinguished 
in charters of the ninth century as Francorum rilln and Homnnorum villa. This is 
an instance where the population seems to have been of different r.ice. Hut com- 
monly the owner's Christian name is followed by a familiar termination. ]n that 
same neighborhood proper names of German origin, with the terminations inllp, 
court, mont, val, and the lilje, are very frequent. And this he finds to be generallv 
the case north of the Loire, compared with the left bank of that river. It is, of 
course, to be understood tliat this jiroportion of superior land-holders did not extend 
to the general population; for that in all Neustrian France, was (>videntlv composed 
of tliose who spoke the rustic Roman tongue — the corrupt language which, in the 
tenth or eieventii century, became worthy of the name of French: and this was the 
case, as we have just seen, iu part of Austrasia, as Champagne and Lorraine 



74 CLOVIS. Chap. II. Pakt I. 

ancient usages, the latter by the Eoman law down to the French 
revolution ; the laws of Justinian, in the progress of learning, 
having naturally taken the place of the Theodosian.6 

§ 7. The kingdom of Clovis was divided into a number of 
districts, each under the government of a count, a name famil- 
iar to Roman subjects, by Avdiich they rendered the graf oi the 
Germans.^ The authority of this officer extended over all the 
inhabitants, as well Franks as natives. It was his duty to 
administer ji;stice, to preserve tranquillity, to collect the royal 
revenues, and to lead, when required, the free proprietors into 
the field. The title of a duke implied a higher dignity, and 
commonly gave authority over several counties. ^ These offi- 
ces were originally conferred during pleasure ; but the claim of 
a son to succeed his father Avould often be found too plausible 
or too formidable to be rejected, and it is highly i)robable that, 
even under the Merovingian kings, these provincial governors 
had laid the foundations of that indei^endence which was des- 
tined to change the countenance of Europe. The Lombard 
dukes, those especially of Spoleto and Benevento, acquired 
very early an hereditary right of governing tlieir provinces, 
and that kingdom became a sort of federal aristocracy. 

The throne of France was always filled by the royal house 
of Meroveus. However com])lete we may imagine the elec- 
tive rights of the Franks, it is clear that a fundamental law 
restrained them to this family. Such, indeed, had been the 
monarchy of their ancestors the Germans ; such long continued 
to be those of Spain, of England, and perhaps of all European 
nations. The reigning family was immutable ; but at every 
vacancy the heir awaited the contirmation of a })opular elec- 
tion, Avhether that were a substantial privilege or a mere cere- 
mony. Exceptions, however, to the lineal succession are rare 
in the history of any country, unless where an infant heir was 
thought unfit to rule a nation of freemen. But, in fact, it is 
vain to expect a system of constitutional laws rigidly observed 
in ages of anarchy and ignorance. Those antiquaries who have 
maintained the most opposite theories upon such points are sel- 
dom in want of particular instances to support their respective 
conclusions. 

8 This subject is fully treated in Savigiiy's work, " History of the Roman Law in 
the ]\Ii(idle Ages." 

' The word graf was not always equivalent to comes ; it took in some countries, 
as in Kngland, the form gerefa, and stood for the vicecomes or sheriff, the count or 
alderman's deputy. 

8 Some have supposed these titles to have been applied indifferently. But the 
contrary is easily proved, and especially by a line of Kortunatus: 
Qui modo dat Comitis, det libi jura Ducis. 



Feudal System. CLOVIS. — KINGLY TOVVER. 75 

Clovis was a leader of barbarians, who respected his valor 
and the rank which they liad given him, but were incapable of 
servile feelings, and jealous of their common as well as indi- 
vidual rights. In order to appreciate the power which he pos- 
sessed, it has been customary with French writers to bring 
forward the well-known story of the vase of Soissons. When 
the plunder taken in Clovis's invasion of Gaul was set out in 
this ])lace for distribution, he begged for himself a precious 
vessel belonging to the Church of iiheims. The army having 
expressed their willingness to consent, " You shall have noth- 
ing here," exclaimed a soldier, striking it with his battle-axe, 
" but Avliat falls to your share by lot." Clovis took the vessel 
Avithout marking any resentment, but found an opportunity, 
next year, of revenging himself by the death of the soldier. 
The whole behavior of Clovis appears to be that of a barbarian 
chief, not daring to withdraw any thing from the rapacity, or 
to chastise the rudeness, of his followers. 

But if such was the liberty of the Franks when they first 
became conquerors of Gaul, we have good reason to believe 
that they did not long preserve it. A people not very numer- 
ous spread over the spacious provinces of Gaul, wherever lands 
were assigned to or seized by them. It became a burden to 
attend those general assemblies of the nation which were 
annually convened in the month of March, to deliberate upon 
public business, as well as to exhibit a muster of military 
strength. After some time it appears that these meetings 
drew together only the bishops, and those invested with civil 
offices. ■ The ancient inhabitants of Gaul, having little notion 
of political liberty, were unlikely to resist the most tyrannical 
conduct. Many of them became officers of state, and advisers 
of the sovereign, whose ingenuity might teach maxims of des- 
potism unknown in the forests of Germany. We shall scarcely 
wrong the bishops by suspecting them of more pliable courtli- 
ness than was natural to the long-haired warriors of Clovis. 
Yet it is probable that some of the Franks were themselves 
instrumental in this change of their government. The court of 
the Merovingian kings was crowded with followers, who have 
been plausibly derived from those of the German chiefs de- 
scribed by Tacitus ; men forming a distinct and elevated class 
in the state, and known by the titles of Fideles, Leudes, and 
Antrustiones. They took an oath of fidelity to the king upon 
their admission into that rank, and were commonly remuner- 
ated Avith gifts of land. Under different appellations Ave find, 
as some antiquaries think, this class of courtiers in the early 



76 THE NOBILITY. Cu.u\ II. Pakt I. 

records of Lonibardy and England. The general name of 
Yassals (from Givas, a Celtic word for a servant) is applied to 
them in every country. By the assistance of these faithful 
su})porters it has been thought that the regal authority of 
Clovis's successors was insured. However this may be, the 
annals of his more immediate descendants exhibit a course of 
oppression, not merely displayed, as will often happen among 
uncivilized people, though free, in acts of private injustice, 
but in such general tyranny as is incompatible with the exist- 
ence of any real checks upon the sovereign. 

But before the middle of the seventh century the kings of 
this line had fallen into that contemptible state which has 
been described in the last chapter. The mayors of the-palace, 
who from mere officers of the court had now become masters 
of the kingdom, were elected by the Franks, not indeed the 
whole body of that nation, but the provincial governors and 
considerable proprietors of land. Some inequality there prob- 
ably existed from the beginning in the partition of estates, 
and this had been greatly increased by the common changes of 
property, by the rapine of those savage times, and by royal 
munificence. Thus arose that landed aristocracy which be- 
came the most striking feature in tlie political system of 
Europe during many centuries, and is, in fact, its great distinc- 
tion both from the despotism of Asia and tlie equality of 
republican governments. 

§ 8. There has been some dispute about the origin of nobil- 
ity in France, which might perhaps be settled, or at least 
better understood, by fixing our conception of the te-rm. In 
our modern acceptation it is usually taken to imply certain 
distinctive privileges in the political order, inherent in the 
blood of the possessor, and conserpiently not transferable like 
those which property confers. Limited to tliis sense, nobility, 
I conceive, was unknown to the conquerors of Gaul till long 
after the downfall of the Roman Empire. They felt, no doubt, 
the common prejudice of mankind in favor of those whose an- 
cestry is conspicuous, when comi)ared with persons of obscure 
birth. This is the primary meaning of nobility, and jjerfectly 
distinguishable from the ])Ossession of exclusive civil rights. 
Those who are acquainted with the constitution of the Roman 
republic will recollect an instance of the difference between 
these two species of hereditary distinction, in the j^atricii and 
the nohilefi. Though I do not think that the tribes of German 
origin paid so much regard to genealogy as some Scandinavian 
and Celtic nations (else the beginnings of the greatest houses 



Fkudal System. FISCAL LANDS. — BENEFICES. 77 

would not have been so enveloped in doul)t as we find them), 
there are abundant traces of the respect in which families of 
known antiquity were held among them. 

But the essential distinction of ranks in France, perhaps also 
in Spain and Lombardy, was founded upon the possession of 
land, or u])on civil employment. The aristocracy of wealth 
preceded that of birth, which indeed is still chiefly dependent 
upon tlie other for its importance. A Frank of large estate 
was styled a noble ; if he wasted or was despoiled of his wealth, 
his descendants fell into the mass of the people, and the new 
])Ossessor became noble in his stead. Families were noble by 
descent, because they were rich by the same means. Wealth 
gave them power, and power gave them pre-eminence. But 
no distinction was made by the Salic or Lombard codes in the 
composition for homicide, the great test of political station, 
except in favor of the king's vassals. It seems, however, by 
some of the barbaric codes, those namely of the Burgundians, 
Visigoths, Saxons, and the English colony of the latter nation, 
that the free men were ranged by them into two or three 
classes, and a difference made in the price at which their lives 
were valued : so that there certainly existed the elements of 
aristocratic privileges, if we cannot in strictness admit their 
completion at so early a period. The Antrustiones of the 
kings of the Franks were also noble, and a composition was 
paid for their murder treble of that for an ordinary citizen ; 
but this was a personal, not an hereditary, distinction. A link 
was wanting to connect their eminent privileges with their 
posterity ; and this liidv was to be supplied by hereditary 
benefices. 

§ 9. Besides the lands distributed among the nation, others 
were reserved to the crown, partly for the support of its dig- 
nity, and partly for the exercise of its munificence. These 
are called Fiscal Lands ; they were dispersed over different 
parts of the kingdom, and formed the most regular source of 
revenue. But the greater portion of them were granted out 
to favored subjects, under the name of benefices, subsequently 
called FiEFs,^ the nature of wliich is one of the most important 
points in the policy of these ages. Benefices were, it is prob- 

9 The ierxn fief { feodum, fei(,dum)ho^an to be applied to benefices when tliey became 
hereditary, and first occurs in a capitulary of tlie reign of the Emperor Cliarles tlie 
Fat, A. 11. S84. Different etymologies are given of tliis word ; that which seems most 
prol)able derives it from feh, salary or pay, and odh, property — implying that it was 
land conferred as a reward or recompense of services. Others refer it to the Latin 
fides ; others again, among whom is Lehuerou, prefer the Teutonic rooX foden, nutrire. 
Sir F. I'nlgrave deduces it ingeniously, but with slight probability, from the Jtoman 
law-term emphijteusis. 



78 SUB-IXFEUDATION^. Chap. II. Takt I. 

able, most frequently bestowed upon the professed courtiers, 
the Antrustiones or Leudt'S, and upon the provincial gov- 
ernors. It by no means appears that any conditions of military 
service were expressly annexed to these grants : but it may 
justly be presumed that such favors were not conferred with- 
out an expectation of some return ; and we read both in law 
and history that beneficiary tenants were more closely con- 
nected with the crown than mere allodial proprietors. Whoever 
possessed a benefice was expected to serve his sovereign in the 
field. But of allodial proprietors only the owner of three 
mansi ^° Avas called upon for personal service. Where there 
were three possessors of single mansi, one went to the army, 
and the others contributed to his equipment. 

jSIost of those who have written upon the feudal system lay 
it down that benefices Avere originally precarious, and revoked 
at pleasure by the sovereign ; that they were afterwards 
granted for life ; and at a subsequent period became heredi- 
tary. No satisfactory proof, however, appears to have been 
brought of the first stage in this progress. The ordinary 
duration of benefices was at least the life of the possessor, 
alter which tliey reverted to the fisc ; but they soon became 
hereditaiy. Cliildren would naturally put in a very strong 
claim to what their father had enjoyed ; and the weakness of 
the crown in the seventh century must have rendered it diffi- 
cult to reclaim its property. A natural consequence of hered- 
itary benefices was that those who possessed them carved out 
portions to be held of themselves by a similar tenure. Abun- 
daut proofs of this custom, best known by the name of Sub- 
Infcudation, occur even in the capitularies of Pepin and 
Charlemague. At a later period it became universal ; and 
what had begun perhaps through ambition or pride was at 
last dictated by necessity. In that dissolution of all law 
which ensued after the death of Charlemagne, the powerful 
leaders, constautly engaged in domestic warfare, placed their 
chief dependency upon men whom they attached by gratitude, 
and bound by strong conditions. The oath of fidelity which 
they had taken, the homage which they had paid to the sover- 
eign, they exacted from their own vassals. To render military 
service became the essential obligation which the tenant of a 
benefice undertook ; and out of those ancient grants, now be- 
come for the most part hereditary, there grew up in the tenth 

!•> The precise area of a niansus i^ uncertain It consisted, according to Du Cange, 
of twelve jiigera ; but what lie meant by a juger, is not stated. The ancient Roman 
juger was about five-eighths of an acre ; the raiisianarpcut was a fourth more thun 
yue. This would make a dillereuce as two to ouc. 



Feudal System. MILITARY SERVICE. 79 

century, botli iu name and reality, the system of feudal 
tenures. 

This revohition "vras accompanied by another still more 
important. The provincial governors, the dukes and counts, 
to whom we may add the marquises or margraves intrusted 
with, the custody of the frontiers, had taken the lead in all 
public measures after the decline of the Merovingian kings. 
Charlemagne, duly jealous of their ascendency, checked it by 
suffering the duchies to expire without renewal, by granting 
very few counties hereditarily, by removing the administra- 
tion of justice from the hands of the counts into those of his 
own itinerant judges, and, if we are not deceived in his policy, 
by elevating the ecclesiastical order as a counterpoise to that 
of the nobility. But iu the t?ntli century there followed an 
entire prostration of the royal authority, and the counts 
usurped their governments as little sovereignties, with the 
domains and all regalian rights, subject only to the feudal 
superiority of the king. They now added the name of the 
county to their own, and their wives took the appellation of 
countess. In Italy, the independence of tlie dukes was still 
more complete ; and although Otho the Great and his descend- 
ants kept a stricter rein over those of Germany, yet we find 
the great fiefs of their empire, throughout the tenth century, 
granted almost invariably to the male and even female heirs 
of the last possessor. 

Meanwhile, the allodial proprietors were exposed to the ra- 
pacity of the counts, who, whether as magistrates or gov- 
ernors, or as overbearing lords, had it always in their power 
to harass them. Every district was exposed to continual 
hostilities ; sometimes from a foreign enemy, more often from 
the owners of castles and fastnesses, which in the tenth cen- 
tury, under pretence of resisting the Kormans and Hunga- 
rians, served the purposes of private war. Against such a 
system of rapine the military compact of lord and vassal was 
the only effectual shield ; its essence was the reciprocity of 
service and protection. But an insulated allodialist had no 
support. Without law to redress his injuries, without the 
royal power to sup])ort his right, he had no course left but 
to compromise with oppression, and subject himself, in return 
for protection, to a feudal lord. This was usually called 
comviendatlon, which created a personal relation between lord 
and vassal, closely resembling that of ])atron and client in the 
Roman republic. Though originally this comviendatlon had 
no relation to land, but created a merely personal tie — fidelity 



so CHANGE OF TENURES. Chap. II. Part T. 

in return for prutectiuii — it is easy to conceive that the 
allodialist who obtained this privilege, as it might justly ap- 
pear in an age of rapine, must often do so by subjecting 
himself to the law of tenure. In this way, during the tenth 
and eleventh centuries, allodial lands in France had chiefly 
become feudal. 

There is a famous edict of the emperor Conrad II., sur- 
named the Salic, at Milan, in the year 1037, which, though 
immediately relating only to Lombardy, marks the full ma- 
turity of the feudal system, and the last stage of its progress. 

Four regulations of great importance are established tliere- 
in : that no man should be deprived of his fief, Avhether held 
of the emperor or a mesne lord, but by the laws of the 
empire and the judgment of his peers ; and that from svich 
judgment an immediate vassal might appeal to his sover- 
eign ; that fiefs should be inherited by sons and their children, 
or, in their failure, by brothers, provided they were fevda 
paterna, such as had descended from the father ; and that the 
lord should not alienate the fief of his vassal without his 
consent. 

Such Avas the progress of these feudal tenures, which de- 
termined the political character of every European monarchy 
where they prevailed, as well as formed the foundations of its 
jurisprudence. It is imi)ortant to keep in mind that the 
feudal system Avas the general establishment of a peculiar 
relation between the sovereign (not as king, but as lord) and 
his immediate vassals ; between these again and others stand- 
ing to them in the same relation of vassalage, and thus fre- 
quently through several links in the chain of tenancy. If 
this relation, and especially if the latter and essential element, 
sub-infeudation, is not to be found, there is no feudal system, 
though there are many analogies to it, more or less remark- 
able or strict. If the reader asks what were the immediate 
causes of establishing this polity we must refer him to three 
alone — to the grants of beneficiary lands to the vassal and 
his heirs, without which there could hardly be sub-infeudation ; 
to the analogous grants of official honors, particularly that of 
count or governor of a district ; and, lastly, to the voluntary 
conversion of allodial into feudal tenure, through free land- 
holders submitting their persons and estates, by way of com- 
mendation, to a neighboring lord or to the count of a district. 
All tliese — though several instances, especially of the first, 
occurred much earlier — belong generally to the ninth century, 
and may be supposed to have been fully accomplished about 



Feudal System. PRIKCIPLES OF FEUDAL RELATION. SI 

the beginning of the tenth ; to which period, therefore, and not 
to an earlier one, we refer the feudal system in France. It is 
now time to describe the legal qualities and effects of this 
relation, so far only as may be requisite to understand its 
influence upon the political system. 

§ 10. The essential principle of a fief was a mutual contract 
of support and fidelity. Whatever obligations it laid upon 
the vassal of service to his lord, corresponding duties of pro- 
tection were imposed by it on the lord towards his vassal. If 
these were transgressed on either side, the one forfeited his 
land, the other his seigniory or rights over it. Nor were mo- 
tives of interest left alone to operate in securing the feudal 
connection. The associations founded upon ancient custom 
and friendly attachment, the impulses of gratitude and honor, 
the dread of infamy, the sanctions of religion, were all em- 
ployed to strengthen these ties, and to render them equally 
powerful with the relations of nature, and far more so than 
those of political society. It was a question agitated among 
tlie feudal lawyers, whetlier a vassal was bound to follow the 
standard of his lord against the king. In the works of those 
who wrote when the feudal system was declining, or who were 
anxious to maintain the royal authority, this is commonly 
decided in the negative. But it was not so during the heiglit 
of the feudal system in France. The vassals of Henry II. 
and Richard I. never hesitated to adhere to them against the 
sovereign, nor do they appear to have incurred any blame on 
that account. 

§ 11. The ceremonies used in conferring a fief were princi- 
pally three — Homage, Fealty, and Investiture. 1. The first 
was designed as a significant expression of the submission 
and devotedness of the vassal towards his lord. In perform- 
ing Homage,^^ his head was uncovered, his belt ungirt, his 
sword and spurs removed ; he placed liis hands, kneeling, be- 
tween those of the lord, and promised to become his man 
from henceforward ; to serve him with life and limb and 
worldly honor, faithfully and loyally, in consideration of the 
lands which he held under him. Xone but tlie lord in person 
could accept homage, which was commonly concluded by a 
kiss. 2. An oath of Fealty ^'^ was indispensable in every fief ; 
but the ceremony was less peculiar than that of homage, and 
it might be received by proxy. It was taken by ecclesiastics, 
but not by minors ; and in language differed little from the 
form of homage. 3. Itivestiture ^^ or the actual conveyance of 

" Homagmm, hominium,, '- FUlpJilas. '^ Investura. 



82 TER]kI OF MILITARY SERVICE. Chap. tl. Part I. 

feudal lands, was of two kinds ; proper and improper. The 
first was an actual putting in possession upon the ground, 
either by the lord or his deputy ; which is called, in our law, 
livery of seisin. The second was symbolical, and consisted in 
the delivery of a turf, a stone, a wand, a branch, or whatever 
else might have been made visual by the caprice of local 
custom. 

§ 12. Upon investiture, the duties of the vassal com- 
menced. These it is impossible to define or enumerate ; be- 
cause the services of military tenure, which is chiefiy to be 
considered, were in their nature uncertain, and distinguished 
as such from those incident to feuds of an inferior description. 
It was a breach of faith to divulge the lord's counsel, to con- 
ceal from him the machinations of others, to injure his person 
or fortune, or to violate the sanctity of his roof and the honor 
of his family. In battle he was bound to lend his horse to 
his lord when dismounted ; to adhere to his side, while fight- 
ing ; and to go into captivity as a hostage for him, when taken. 
His attendance was due to the lord's courts, sometimes to 
witness, and sometimes to bear a part in, the administration 
of justice. 

The measure, however, of military service was generally 
settled by some usage. Forty days was the usual term during 
which the tenant of a knight's fee Avas bound to be in the field 
at his own expense. This was extended by 8t. Louis to sixty 
days, except when the charter of infeudation expressed a 
shorter period. But the length of service diminished with the 
quantity of land. For half a knight's fee but twenty days 
were due ; for an eighth part but five ; and when this was 
commuted for an escuage or pecuniary assessment, the same 
proportion was observed, ^* Men turned of sixty, public 
magistrates, and, of course, women, were free from personal 
service, but obliged to send their substitutes. A failure in 
this primary duty incurred perhaps strictly a forfeiture of the 
fief. But it was usual for the lord to inflict an amercement, 
known in England by the name of escuage. The regulations 
as to the place of service were less uniform than those which 
regarded time. In some places the vassal was not bound to 
go beyond the lord's territory, or only so far as that he might 
return the same day. Other customs compelled him to follow 

1* The knight's fee was fixed in England at the annual value of £20. Every estate 
supposed to be of tliis value, and entered as such in the rolls of the exchequer, was 
bound to contribute the service of a soldier, or to pay an escuage to the amount 
assessed upon knights' fee. 



Feitdal System. FEUDAL INCIDENTS. 83 

Lis chief upon all his expeditions. These inconvenient and 
varying usages betrayed the origin of the feudal obligations, 
not founded upon any national policy, but springing from the 
chaos of anarchy and intestine war, which they were well cal- 
culated to perpetuate. For the public defence their machinery 
was totally unserviceable, until such changes were wrought as 
destroyed the character of the fabric. 

§ 13. Independently of the obligations of fealty and ser- 
vice, which the nature of the contract created, other advantages 
were derived from it by the lord, which have been called feu- 
dal incidents: these were, 1. Keliefs. 2. Fines upon aliena- 
tion. 3. Escheats. 4. Aids ; to which may be added, though 
not generally established, 5. Wardship, and 6. Marriage. 

(1.) A Relief was a sum of money (unless where charter or 
custom introduced a different tribute) due from every one of 
full age, taking a fief by descent. This was in some countries 
arbitrary, and the exactions practised under this pretence both 
upon superior and inferior vassals, ranked among the greatest 
abuses of the feudal policy. Henry I. of England promises 
in his charter that they shall in future be just and reasonable ; 
but the rate does not appear to have been finally settled till 
it was laid down in Magna Charta at about a fourth of tlie 
annual value of the fief. By a law of St. Louis, in 1245, the 
lord was entitled to enter upon the lands, if the heir could 
not pay the relief, and possess them for a year. This right 
existed unconditionally in England under the name of primer 
seisin, but was confined to the king. 

(2.) Closely connected with reliefs were the Fines vpon 
alienation — tliat is, the fines paid to the lord upon the alien- 
ation of his vassal's • feud ; and indeed we frequently find 
them called by the same name. The spirit of feudal tenure 
established so intimate a connection between the two parties 
that it could be dissolved by neither without requiring the 
other's consent. If the lord transferred his seigniory, the 
tenant was to testify his concurrence ; and this ceremony was 
long kept up in England under the name of attornment. 
The assent of the lord to his vassal's alienation was still more 
essential, and more difficult to be attained. He had received 
his fief, it was supposed, for reasons peculiar to himself or to 
his family ; at least his heart and arm were bound to his supe- 
rior ; and his service was not to be exchanged for that of a 
stranger, who might be unable or unwilling to render it. By 
the law of France the lord was entitled, upon every alienation 
made by his tenant, either to redeem the fief by paying the 



84 RELIEFS, FI:N"ES, ESCHEATS, AIDS. Chap. II. Part I. 

purchase-money, or to claim a certain part of the vahie, by- 
way of fine, upon the change of tenancy. -^^ 

(3.) Escheats. — As fiefs descended but to the posterity of 
the first taker, or at the utmost to his kindred, they necessarily 
became sometimes vacant for Avant of heirs ; especially where, 
as in England, there was no power of devising them by will. 
In this case it was obvious that they ought to revert to the 
lord, from whose property they had been derived. These re- 
versions became more frequent through the forfeitures occa- 
sioned by the vassal's delinquency, either towards his superior 
lord or the estate. Various cases are laid down in the " Assises 
de Jerusalem," where the vassal forfeits his land for a year, 
for his life, or forever. But under rapacious kings, siTch as 
the Norman line in England, absolute forfeitures came to pre- 
vail, and a new doctrine was introduced — the corruption of 
blood, by which the heir was effectually excluded from dedu- 
cing his title at any distant time through an attainted ancestor. 

(4.) lieliefs, fines upon alienation, and escheats, seem to be 
natural reservations in the lord's bounty to his vassal. He 
had riglits of another class which principally arose out of 
fealty and intimate attachment. Such were the aids Avhich 
he was entitled to call for in certain j'trescribed circumstances. 
These depended a great deal \\\)0\\ local custom, and were often 
extorted unreasonably. Hence by Magna Gharta three only were 
retained in England — to make the lord's eldest son a knight, 
to marry his eldest daughter, and to redeem his person from 
prison. They were restricted to nearly the same description 
by a law of AVilliam I. of Sicily, and by the customs of 
France. These feudal aids are deserving of our attention, 
as the beginnings of taxation, of which- for a long time they 
in a great measure answered the purpose, till the craving ne- 
cessities and covetous ])olicy of kings substituted for them 
more durable and onerous burdens. 

I might here, perhaps, close the enumeration of feudal in- 
cidents, but that the two remaining, wardship and marriage, 
though only ]iartial customs, were those of our own country, 
and tend to illustrate the rapacious character of a feudal 
aristocracy. 

"' In Eiifjland oven the practicp of siil) infouilation, which was more conformable 
to the hiw of liefs ami the military genius of tlie svsteni, but injurious to tlie suzer- 
ains, who lost thereljy their escheats and otlier advantages of seigniory, was checked 
by I\Iagna Cliarta, and forbidden i)y the statute Is Kdward 1., called Quia Rmptores, 
which at the same time gave the liberty of alienating lands to be holden of the 
grantor's immediate lord. The tenants of tlie crown were not included in this act; 
but that of 1 Kdward III., c. 1'-', enabled them to alienate, upon the payment of a 
composition into chancery, which was tixed at one-third of the annual value of 
the lands. 



Feudal System. WARDSHIP, MARRIAGE. 85 

(5.) In England, and in Normandy, whicli either led tlie 
way to, or adopted, all these English institutions, the lord 
had the xvardship of his tenant during minority. By virtue 
of this right he had both the care of his person and received 
to his own use the profits of the estate. There is something 
in this custom very conformable to the feudal spirit, since 
none was so fit as the lord to train up his vassal to arms, and 
none could put in so good a claim to enjoy the fief, while the 
military service for which it had been granted was suspended. 
This privilege of guardianship seems to have been enjoyed 
by the lord in some parts of Germany ; but in the law of 
France the custody of the land was intrusted to the next heir, 
and that of the person, as in socage tenures among us, to the 
nearest kindred of that blood which could not inherit. By a 
gross abuse of this custom in England, the right of guardian- 
ship in chivalry, or temporary possession of the lands, was 
assigned over to strangers. This was one of the most vexa- 
tious i:)arts of our feudal tenures, and was never, perhaps, 
more sorely felt than in their last stage under the Tudor and 
Stuart families. 

(6.) Another right given to the lord by the Norman and 
English laws was that of Marriage, or of tendering a husband 
to his female wards while under age, whom they could not 
reject without forfeiting the value of the marriage — that is, 
as much as any one would give to the guardian for such an 
alliance. This was afterwards extended to male wards, and 
became a very Incrative source of extortion to the crown, as 
well as to mesne lords. This custom seems to have had the 
same extent as that of wards]iii)S. It is found in the ancient 
books of Germany, but not of France. The kings, however, 
and even inferior lords, of that country, required their con- 
sent to be solicited for the marriage of their vassals' daugh- 
ters. Several proofs of this occur in the history as well as 
in the laws of France; and the same prerogative, existed in 
Germany, Sicily, and England. 

These feudal servitudes distinguish the maturity of the 
system. No trace of them ap[)ears in the capitularies of 
Charlemagne and his family, nor in the instruments by which 
benefices were granted. I l)elieve that they did not make part 
of the regular feudal law before the eleventh, or, perhaps, the 
twelfth century, though doubtless partial usages of this kind 
had grown up antecedently to either of those periods. Indeed, 
that very general commutation of allodial property into tenure 
which took place between the middle of the ninth and eleventh 



86 PROPER AJiTD IMPROPER FEUDS. Chap. II. Part I. 

centuries would hardly have been effected if fiefs had then 
been liable to such burdens and so much extortion. In half- 
barbarous ages the strong are constantly encroaching upon 
the weak ; a truth Avhich, if it needed illustration, might find 
it in the ])rogress of the feudal system. 

§ 14. We have thus far coniined our inquiry to fiefs holden 
on terms of military service ; since those are the most ancient 
and regular, as well as the most consonant to the sjiirit of the 
system. They alone are called ])roper feuds, and all were pre- 
sumed to be of this description until tlie contrary was proved 
by the charter of the investiture. A proper feud was bestowed 
without price, without fixed stipulation, upon a vassal capable 
of serving personally in the held. But gradually, with the 
help of a little legal ingenuity, improper fiefs of the most va- 
rious kinds were introduced, retaiidng little of the character- 
istics, and less of the spirit, which distinguished the original 
tenures. Women, if indeed that Avere an innovation, were 
admitted to inherit them ; they were granted for a price, and 
without reference to military service. The language of the 
feudal law was applied by a kind of metaphor to almost every 
transfer of property. Hence pensions of money and allowance 
of provisions, however remote from right notions of a hef, were 
sometimes granted under that name ; and even where land was 
the subject of tlie donation, its conditions were often lucrative, 
often honorar}', and sometimes ludicrous. 

There is one extensive species of feudal tenure which may 
be distinctly noticed. The pride of wealth in the Middle 
Ages Avas principally exhibited in a multitude of dependents. 
The court of Charlemagne was crowded with officers of every 
rank, some of the most eminent of whom exercised functions 
about the royal person which would have been thought fit 
only for slaves in the palace of Augustus or Antonine. The 
free-born Franks saw notliing menial in the titles of cup- 
bearer, steward, marshal, and master of the horse, which are 
still borne by the noblest families in many parts of Europe, 
and, till lately, by sovereign princes in the empire. From the 
court of the king this favorite piece of magnificence descended 
to tliose of the prelates and barons, who surrounded themselves 
with household officers called ministerials ; a name equally ap- 
])lied to those of a servile and of a liberal description. The 
latter of these were rewarded witli grants of lands, which they 
held under a feudal tenure by the condition of performing 
some domestic service to the lord. What was called in our 



Feudal System. FEUDAL INCIDENTS. 87 

law grand sergeantiy affords an instance of this species of 

These imperfect feuds, however, belong more properly to 
the liistory of the law, and are chiefly noticed in the present 
sketch because they attest the partiality manifested during 
the Middle Ages to the name and form of a feudal tenure. 
In the regular military lief we see the real principle of the 
system, which might originally have been defined an alliance 
of free land-holders arranged in degrees of subordination 
according to their respective capacities of affording mutual 
support. 

§ 15. The peculiar and varied attributes of feudal tenures 
naturally gave rise to a new jurisprudence, regulating terri- 
torial rights in those parts of Europe which had adopted the 
system. For a length of time this rested in traditionary 
customs observed in the domains of each jjrince or lord, 
without much regard to those of his neighbors. Laws were 
made occasionally by the emperor in Germany and Italy, 
which tended to fix the usages of those countries. About 
the year 1170, Girard and Ubertus, two Milanese lawyers, 
published two books of the law of fiefs, which obtained a 
great authority, and have been regarded as the groundwork 
of that jurisprudence. A number of subsequent commenta- 
tors swelled this code with their glosses and opinions, to en- 
lighten or obscure the judgment of the imperial tribunals. 
These were chiefly civilians or canonists, who brought to the 
interpretation of old barbaric customs the principles of a very 
different school. Hence a manifest change was wrought in 
the law of feudal tenure, which they assimilated to the usu- 
fruct or the emphyteusis of the Roman code ; modes of ])rop- 
erty somewhat analogous in appearance, but totally distinct in 
principle, from the legitimate fief. These Lombard lawyers 
propagated a doctrine which has been too readily received, that 
the feudal system originated in their country. But whatever 
weight it may have possessed within the limits of the empire, 
a different guide must be followed in the ancient customs of 
of France and England. These were fresh from the fountain 
that curious polity with which the stream of Roman law had 
never mingled its waters. In England we know that the 

i« " This tenure," says Littleton, " is where a man holds his lands or tenements of 
our sovereign lord the king by sucli services as he ought to do in his proper person to 
the king, as to carry the banner of the king, or his lance, or to lead his array, or to be 
Ills marshal, or to carry his sword before liim at his coronation, or to be his sewer at 
his coronation, or his carver, ur his butler, or to be one of liis chamberlains at the 
receipt of his exchequer, or to do other like services." — Sect. 153. 



88 COMMON LAW. Chap. II. Pakt I. 

Norman system establislied between the Conquest and the 
reign of Henry II. was restrained by regular legislation, by 
paramount courts of justice, and by learned writings, from 
breaking into discordant local usages, exce})t in a comparatively 
small number of places, and has become the principal source 
of our common law. But the independence of the French 
nobles produced a much greater variety of customs. The whole 
number collected and reduced to certainty in the sixteenth 
century amounted to two hundred and eighty-live, or omitting 
those inconsiderable for extent or peculiarity, to sixty. The 
earliest written customary in France is that of Beam, which 
is said to have been confirmed by Viscount Gaston IV. in 1088. 
Many others were written in the two subsequent ages, of 
which the customs of Beauvoisis, compiled by Beaumanoir 
under Philip III., are the most celebrated, and contain a 
mass of information on the feudal constitution and manners. 
Under Charles VII. an ordinance was made for the formation 
of a general code of customary law, by ascertaining forever 
in a written collection those of each district; but the work 
was not completed till the reign of Charles IX. This was 
what may be called the common law of the pays coutumiers, 
or northern division of France, and the rule of all their tribu- 
nals, unless where controlled by royal edicts. 



Feudal System. ANALYSIS OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. 89 



PART II. 

§ - Analysis of the Feudal System. § 2. Its Local Extent. § 3. View of the dif- 
ferent Orders of Societ" during the Feudal Ages. Nobility. Their Ranks and Priv- 
ileges. § 4. Clergy. § 5. Freemen. § 6. Serfs or Villeins. § 7. Comparative State 
of France and Germany. §8. Privileges enjoyed by the French Vassals. Right of 
coining Money. §9. Right of Private War. §10. Immunity from Taxation. His- 
torical View of tlie Royal Revenue in France. Methods adopted to augment it by 
Depreciation of till- (Join, etc. §11. Legislative Power. Its State under the Mero- 
vingian Kings, ;niil charlcnuign*'. His Councils. § 12. Suspension of any general le- 
gislative Authority (luring the Prevaknceof Feudal Principles. The King's Council. 
§ 13. Jleans adopted to supply tlie \V;int of a National Assembly. § 14. Gradual Pro- 
gress of the King's Legislative Power. § 15. Philip IV. assembles the States-Gen- 
eral. Their Powers limited to Taxation. §10. States under the Sons of Philip IV. 
§17. States of l.i55 and KiaO. They nearly etfect an entire Revolution. §18. The 
Crown recovers its Vigor. § 19. States of 1380, and Charles VI. Subsequent As- 
semblies under Charles VI. and Charles VII. §20. 'i'he Crown becomes more and 
more absolute. Louis XL § 21. States of Tours in 1484. §22. Historical View of 
Jurisdiction in France. Its earliest Stage under the first Race of Kings, and Charle- 
magne. §23. Territorial Jurisdiction. Feudal t'ourts of Justice. § 24. Trial by 
Combat. § 25. Code of St. Louis. §20. The territorial Jurisdictions give way. Pro- 
gress of the Judicial Power of theCrown. § 27. I'arliament of Paris. § 28. Peers 
of France. §29 Increased Authority of the Parliament. Registration of Edicts. 
§ 30. Causes of the Decline of the Feudal System. Acquisitions of Domain by the 
Crown. §31. Charters of Incorporation granted to Towns. First Charters in the 
Twelfth Century. §32. Privileges contained in them. §.33. Military Service of 
Feudal Tenants commuted for Money. Hired Troops. Change in the Military 
System of Europe. §34. Decay of Feudal Principles. §35. General View of the 
Advantages and Disadvantages attending the Feudal System. 

§ 1. The advocates of a Roman origin for most of the in- 
stitutions which we find in the kingdoms erected on the ruins 
of the empire are naturally prone to magnify the analogies to 
feudal tenure which Rome presents to us, and even to deduce 
it either from the ancient relation of patron and client, and that 
of personal commendation, which was its representative in a 
later age, or from the frontier lands granted in the third cen- 
tury to tlie Laeti, or barbarian soldiers, who held them, doubt- 
less, subject to a condition of military service. The usage of 
commendation especially, so frequent in the fifth century, be- 
fore the conquest of Gaul, as well as afterwards, does certainly 
bear a strong analogy to vassalage, and I have already pointed 
it out as one of its sources. It wanted, however, that definite 
relation to the tenure of land which distinguished the latter. 
The royal Antrustio (whether the word commendatus were ap- 
plied to him or not) stood bound by gratitude and loyalty to 
his sovereign, and in a very different degree from a common 
subject; but he was not perhaps strictly a vassal till he had 



90 EXTENT OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. Chap. II. Part II. 

received a territorial benefice.^ The complexity of sub-iufeii- 
datioii could have no analogy in commendation. The grants to 
veterans and to the Lajti are so far only analogous to fiefs, that 
they establish the principle of holding hands on a condition 
of military service. But this service was no more than what, 
both under Charlemagne and in England, if not in other times 
and places, the allodial freeholder was bound to render for the 
defence of the realm ; it was more commonly required, because 
the lands were on a barbarian frontier ; but the duty was not 
even very analogous to that of a feudal tenant. The essence 
of a fief seems to be, that its tenant owed fealty to a lord, and 
not to the state or the sovereign ; the lord might be the latter, 
but it was not, feudally speaking, as a sovereign that he was 
obeyed. This is, therefore, sufficient to warrant us in tracing 
the real theory of feuds no higher than the Merovingian his- 
tory in France; their full establishment, as has been seen, is 
considerably later. But the preparatory steps in the constitu- 
tions of the declining empire are of considerable importance, 
not merely as analogies, but as predisposing circumstances, and 
even germs to be subsequently developed. The beneficiary 
tenure of lands could not well be brought by the conquerors 
from Germany ; but the donatives of arms or precious metals 
bestowed by the chiefs on their followers were also analogous 
to fiefs ; and, as the Koman institutions were one source of the 
law of tenure, so these were another. 

It is of great importance to be on our guard against seeming 
analogies which vanish away when they are closely observed. 
We should speak inaccurately if Ave were to use the word 
feudal for the service of the Irish or Highland clans to their 
chieftain ; their tie was that of imagined kindred and respect 
for birth, not the spontaneous compact of vassalage. Much 
less can we extend the name of feud, though it is sometimes 
strangely misapplied, to the polity of Poland and Russia. All 
the Polish nobles were equal in rights, and independent of 
each other; all who were less than noble were in servitude. 
No government can be more op})osite to the long gradations 
and mutual duties of the feudal system. 

§ 2. The regular machinery and systematic establishment 
of feuds, in fact, may be considered as almost confined to the 
dominions of Charlemagne, and to those countries which after- 
wards derived it from thence. In England it can hardly be 

1 This word " vassal " is uspfl very inclefinitoly ; it means, in its original sense, 
only a servant or riependent. IJiit in the Coutinentul records of histories we com- 
monly find it applied to feudal tenants, 



Feudal System. ORDERS OF SOCIETY. 91 

tliouglit to have existed in a complete state before the Con- 
quest. Scotland, it is supposed, borrowed it soon after from 
her neighbor. The Lombards of Benevento had introduced 
feudal customs into the Neapolitan provinces, which the Nor- 
man conquerors afterwards perfected. Feudal tenures were so 
general in the kingdom of Aragon, that I reckon it among the 
monarchies which were founded upon that basis. Charle- 
magne's enipire, it must be remembered, extended as far as the 
Ebro. Bu.t in Castile and Portugal they were very rare, and 
certainly could produce no political effect. Benefices for life 
were sometimes granted in the kingdoms of Denmark and 
Bohemia. Neither of these, however, nor Sweden nor Hun- 
gary, comes under the description of countries influenced by tlie 
feudal system. That system, however, after all these limita- 
tions, was so extensively diffused, that it might produce con- 
fusion as well as prolixity to pursue collateral branches of its 
history in all the countries where it prevailed. But this em- 
barrassment may be avoided without any loss, I trust, of 
important information. The English constitution will find its 
place in another portion of this volume ; and the political con- 
dition of Italy, after the eleventh century, was not much af- 
fected, except in the kingdom of Naples, by the laws of feudal 
tenure. I shall confine myself, therefore, chiefly to France 
and Germany ; and far more to the former than the latter 
country. But it may be expedient first to contemplate the 
state of society in its various classes during the prevalence of 
feudal principles, before we trace their influence upon the 
national government. 

§ 3. It has been laid down already as most probable that no 
proper aristocracy, except that of wealth, was known under the 
early kings of France ; and it was hinted that hereditary bene- 
fices, or, in other words, fiefs, might supply the link that was 
wanting between personal privileges and those of descent. 
The possessors of beneficiary estates were usually the richest 
and most conspicuous individuals in the estate. Tliey were 
immediately connected with the crown, and partakers in the 
exercise of justice and royal counsels. Their sons now canie 
to inherit this eminence; and, as fiefs were either inalienable, 
or at least not very frequently alienated, rich families were 
kept long in sight ; and, whether engaged in public affairs, or 
living with magnificence and hospitality at home, naturally 
drew to themselves popular estimation. The dukes and counts, 
who had changed their quality of governors into that of lords 
over the provinces intrusted to them, were at the head of this 



92 THE NOBILITY. Cuap. II. Pakt II. 

noble class. And in imitation of tliem, tlieir own vassals, as 
well as those of the crown, and even rich allodialists, assnmed 
titles from their towns or castles, and thns arose a nnmber of 
petty counts, barons, and viscounts. This distinct class of 
nobility became co-extensive with the feudal tenures. For the 
military tenant, however poor, Avas subject to no tribute ; no 
prestation, but service in the held ; he was the companion of 
his lord in the sports and feasting of his castle, the peer of his 
court ; he fought on horseback, he was clad in the coat of mail, 
while the commonality, if summoned at all to war, came on 
foot, and witli no armor of defence. As everything in the 
habits of society conspired with that prejudice which, in spite 
of moral philosophers, will constantly raise the profession of 
arms above all others, it was a natural consequence tliat anew 
species of aristocracy, founded upon the mixed considerations 
of birth, tenure, and occupation, sju'ung out of the feudal sys- 
tem. Every possessor of a fief was a gentleman, though he 
owned but a few acres of land, and furnished his slender con- 
tribution towai'd the equipment of a knight. 

There still, however, wanted something to ascertain gen- 
tility of blood Avhere it was not marked by the actual tenure 
of land. This was supplied by two innovations devised in the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries — the adoption of surnames 
and of armorial bearings. The first are commonly referred to 
the former age, when the nobility began to add the names of 
their estates to their own, or, having any way acquired a dis- 
tinctive appellation, transmitted it to their ])osterity. As 
to armorial bearings, there is no doubt that emblems some- 
what similar have been immemorially used both in war and 
peace. The shields of ancient warriors, and devices upon 
coins or seals, bear no distinct resemblance to modern blazonry. 
But the general introduction of such bearings, as hereditary 
distinctions, has been sometimes attributed to tournaments, 
wherein the cliam])ions were distingidshed l)y fanciful devices ; 
sometimes to the Crusades, where a multitude of all nations 
and languages stood in need of some visible token to denote 
the banners of their respective chiefs. In fact, the peculiar 
symbols of heraldry point to both these sources, and have been 
borrowed in part from each. Hereditary arms were perhaps 
scarcely used by private families before the beginning of the 
thirteenth century, ^'rom that time, however, they became 
very general, and have contributed to elucidate that branch of 
history which regards tiie descent of illustrious families. 

When the privileges of birth had thus been rendered capable 



Feudal Systkm. THE NOBILITY. 93 

of legitimate proof, they were enhanced in a great degree, and 
a line drawn between the high-born and ignoble classes almost 
as broad as that which separated liberty from servitude. All 
offices of trust and power were conferred on the former ; those 
excepted which appertain to the legal profession. A plebeian 
could not possess a hef.^ Such at least was the original strict- 
ness ; but as the aristocratic principle grew weaker, an indul- 
gence was extended to heirs, and afterwards to purchasers. 
They were even permitted to become noble by the acquisition, 
or at least by its possession for three generations. But not- 
withstanding this ennobling quality of the land, which seems 
rather of an equivocal description, it became an established 
right of the crown to take, every twenty years, and on every 
change of the vassal, a hue, known by the name of franc-fief, 
from plebeians in possession of land held by a noble tenure.' 
A gentleman in France or Germany could not exercise any 
trade without derogating, that is, losing the advantages of his 
rank. A few exceptions were made, at least in the former 
country, in favor of some liberal arts and of foreign commerce. 
But in nothing does the feudal haughtiness of birth more show 
itself than in the disgrace which attended unequal marriages. 
No children could inherit a territory held immediately of the 
empire unless both their parents belonge 1 to the higher class 
of nobility. In France the offspring of a gentleman by a ple- 
beian mother were reputed noble for the purposes of inherit- 
ance, and of exemption from tribute.* But they coidd not be 
received into any order of chivalry, though capable of simple 
knighthood ; nor were they considered as any better than a 
bastard class deeply tainted with the alloy of their maternal 
extraction. Many instances occur where letters of nobility 
have been granted to reinstate them in their rank. For several 
purposes it was necessary to prove four, eight, sixteen, or a 
greater number of quarters — that is, of coats borne by paternal 
and maternal ancestors ; and the same practice still subsists in 
Germany. 

It appears, therefore, that the original nobility of the Conti- 
nent were Avhat we may call self-created, and did not derive 

- We have no English word that coiweys the full sense of roturier. How glorious 
is this delicii'iicy in our political language", and how ditTerent are the ideas suggested 
by commoner ! Roturier, according to Du Cange, is derived from rupturarious, a 
peasant, ab agrum rumpendo. 

3 The right, originally perhaps usurpation, called franc-fief, began under Philip the 
Fair. " Ordonnances des Rois," t. i., p. 324; Uenisart, art. " Franc-fief." 

* Nobility, to a certain degree, was communicated througli the mother alone, not 
oiilv hv the custom of riiampagne, but in all parts of France; that is, tlie issue were 
" irentillioiiimes du fait de leur corps," and could possess tiefs ; but, says Heaumanoir, 
" la gentilesse par laquelle ondevient chevalier doit veuir de par le pere," c. 45. 



94 PRIVILEGES OF THE NOBILITY. Chap. II. 1'akt II. 

their rank from any such concessions of their respective sover- 
eigns as have been necessary in subsequent ages. In England 
the baronies by tenure miglit belong to the same class, if the 
lands upon which they depended had not been granted by the 
crown. But the kings of France, before the end of the thir- 
teenth century, began to assume a privilege of creating nobles 
by their own authority, and without regard to the tenure of 
land. Philip the Hardy, in 1271, was the first French king 
who granted letters of nobility ; under the reigns of Philip the 
Fair and his children they gradually became frequent. This 
effected a change in the character of nobility, and had as obvi- 
ous a moral, as other events of the same age had a political, 
influence in diminishing the power and independence of the 
territorial aristocracy. The privileges originally connected 
with ancient lineage and extensive domains became common to 
the low-born creatures of a court, and lost consequently part of 
their title to respect. The lawyers, as I have observed above, 
pretended that nobility could not exist without a royal conces- 
sion. They acquired themselves, in return for their exaltation 
of prerogative, an official nobility by the exercise of magistracy. 
The institutions of chivalry again gave rise to a vast increase 
of gentlemen, knighthood, on whomsoever conferred by the 
sovereign, being a sufficient passport to noble privileges. It 
was usual, perliaps, to grant previous letters of nobility to a 
plebeian for whom the honor of knighthood was designed. 

In this noble or gentle class there were several gradations. 
All those in France who held lands immediately depending 
upon the crown, whatever titles they might bear, were com- 
prised in the order of Barons. These were originally the 
peers of the king's court ; they possessed the higher territorial 
jurisdiction, and had the right of carrying their own banner 
into the field. To these corresponded the Valvassores majores 
and Capitanei of the Empire. In a subordinate class were the 
vassals of this high nobility, who, ujion the Continent, were 
usually termed Varassors — an appellation not unknown, though 
rare, in England.^ The Chatelains (Castellani) belonged to the 
order of Vavassors, as tliey held only arriere fiefs ; but, having 

5 Chaucer conclndps his picturesque descrfjition of the Franklin, in tlie prologue to 
the " Canterbury Tales," thus : 

" Was never such a worthy Vavassor." 

This has perplexed some of our commentators, who, not knowing well what was 
meant by a franklin or by a vavassor, fancied the latter to be of much higher quality 
than the former. The poet, however, was strictly correct; his acquaintance with 
French manners showed him that the country squire, for his franklin is no other, pre- 
cisely corresponded to the vavassor in France. 



Feudal System. STATUS OF THE CLERaY. 95 

fortified houses, from which they derived their name (a dis- 
tinction very important in tliose times), and possessing ampler 
riglits of territorial justice, they rose above the level of tlieir 
fellows in the scale of tenure.^ But after the personal nobility 
of chivalry became the object of pride, the Vavassors who ob- 
tained knighthood were commonly styled bachelors ; tliose who 
had not received that honor fell into the class of squires,'^ or 
Damoiseaux. 

§ 4. It will be needless to dwell upon the condition of the 
inferior clergy, whether secular or professed, as it bears little 
upon the general scheme of polity. The prelates and abbots, 
however, it must be understood, were completely feudal nobles. 
They swore fealty for their lands to the king or other superior, 
received the homage of their vassals, enjoyed the same immu- 
nities, exercised the same jurisdiction, maintained the same 
authority, as the lay lords among whom they dwelt. Military 
service does not appear to have been reserved in the beneficiary 
grants made to cathedrals and monasteries. But when other 
vassals of the crown were called upon to repay the bounty of 
their sovereign by personal attendance in war, the ecclesiasti- 
cal tenants were supposed to fall within the scope of this feudal 
duty, which men little less uneducated and violent than their 
compatriots were not reluctant to fulfil. Charlemagne ex- 
empted or rather proliibited them from personal service by 
several capitularies. The practice, however, as every one who 
has some knowledge of history will be aware, prevailed in suc- 
ceeding ages. Both in national and private warfare we find 
very frequent mention of martial prelates. But, contrary as 
this actual service might be to the civil as well as ecclesiastical 
laws, the clergy Avho held military fiefs Avere of course bound 
to fulfil the chief obligation of that tenure and send their 
vassals into the field. We have many instances of their accom- 

" Whoever hart .-iriirlit to a castle hart la haute justice r tliis being so incirteiit to tlie 
castle that it was transferred along with it. I'licre might, however, be a seigneur 
haut-justicier below the chatehiin; anrt a ridiculous distiiietion was made as to the 
number of posts by which their gallows might be supported. A baron's instrument 
of execution stood on four posts; a chatelain's on three; while the inferior lord who 
liappened to possess la haute justice was forced to hang his subjects on a two-legged 
machine. " Cofltumes de Poitou; Du Cange, v. Furca." 

Ijauri^re quotes from an old manuscript the following sliort scale of r.anks : Due est 
la premiere dignite, puis comtes. jiuis viscomtes, et puis baron, et puis chatelain, et 
puis vavasseur, et puis citaen, et puis villain. — "Ordonnaaces des Rois," t. i. p. v:77. 

' The sons of knights, and giiithnien not yet knighted, took the appellation of 
squires in the twelfth century. That of Damoiseau came into use in the thirteenth. 
The latter was more usual in I'^rance. Squire w.as not used as a title of distinction in 
England till the reign of Edward III., and then but sparingly. Though by Henry 
VI. 's time it was grown more common, yet none assumed it but the sons and heirs of 
knights and some military men, except offlcers in courts of justice, who, by patenter 
prescription, had obtained that addition. 



96 FREEMEN. Chap. II. Part II. 

panying the army, tliougU not mixing in the conflict ; and even 
the parish priests headed the militia of their viUages. The 
prelates, however, sometimes contrived to avoid this military 
service, and the payments introduced in commutation for it, by 
holding lands in frank-almoigne, a tenure wliich exempted them 
from every species of obligation except that of saying masses 
for the benefit of the grantor's family. But, notwithstanding 
the warlike disposition of some ecclesiastics, their more usual 
inability to protect the estates of their churches against rapa- 
cious neighbors suggested a new species of feudal relation and 
tenure. The rich abbeys elected an advocate, whose business 
it was to defend their interests both in secular courts, and, if 
necessary, in the field. Pepin and Charlemagne are styled 
Advocates of the Roman Church. This, indeed, was on a 
magnificent scale; but in ordinary practice the advocate of a 
monastery was some neighboring lord, who, in return for his 
protection, possessed many lucrative privileges, and very fre- 
quently considerable estates, by way of fief from his ecclesias- 
tical clients. Some of those advocates are reproached with 
violating their obligation, and b;^coming the plunderers of those 
whom tliey had been retained to defend. 

§ 5. The classes below the gentry may be divided into free- 
men and villeins. Of the first were the inhabitants of char- 
tered towns, the citizens and burghers, of whom more will be 
said presently. As to those who dwelt in the country, we can 
have no ditticulty in recognizing, so far as England is concerned, 
the socagers, whose tenure was free, though not so noble as 
knight's service, and a numerous body of tenants for term of 
life, who formed that ancient basis of our strength the English 
yeomanry. Hut the mere freemen are not at first sight so dis- 
tinguishal)l(! in other countries. In French records and law- 
books of feudal times, all besides the gentry are usually 
confounded \uider the names of villeins or honimes de pooste 
(gens potestatis).* This proves the slight estimation in which 
all persons of ignoble birth were considered. For undoid^tedly 
there existed a great many proprietors of land and others, as 
free, tliough not as privileged, as the nobility. In the south 
of France, and especially Provence, the number of freemen is 
remarked to have been greater than in the parts on the right 
bank of tlie Loire, where the feudal tenures were almost uni- 
versal. I shall quote part of a passage in Peaumanoir, which 
points out this distinction of ranks pretty fully. " It should 

8 Homo potestMtis, non nobilis — It.i nunciipantiir, quod in potestate doiiiiiii sunt — 
Opponuntur viris nobilibus. — Du Cauge, v, " Potestasi." 



Feudal System. SERFS, OR VILLEINS. 97 

be kiiowu," he says,^ " that there are three conditions of men 
in this world ; the tirst is that of gentlemen ; and the second 
is that of such as are naturally free, being born of a free 
mother. All who have a right to be called gentlemen are free, 
but all who are free are not gentlemen. Gentility comes by 
the father, and not by the mother ; but freedom is derived 
from the mother only ; and whoever is born of a free mother 
is himself free, and has free power to do any thing that is 
lawful." 10 

§ 6. In every age and country, until times comparatively 
recent, personal servitude appears to have been the lot of a 
large, perhaps the greater, portion of mankind. We lose a 
good deal of our sympathy with the spirit of freedom in 
Greece and Rome, when the importunate recollection occurs to 
us of the tasks which might be enjoined, and the punishments 
which might be inflicted, without control either of law or 
opinion, by the keenest patriot of the Comitia, or the Council 
of Five Thousand. A similar, though less powerful, feeling 
will often force itself on the mind when we read the history 
of the Middle Ages. The Germans, in tlieir primitive settle- 
ments, were accustomed to the notion of slavery, incurred not 
only by captivity, but by crimes, by debt, and especially by 
loss in gaming. When they invaded the lloman Empire they 
found the same condition established in all its provinces. 
Hence, from the beginning of the era now under review, servi- 
tude, under somewhat different modes, was extremely common. 
There is some difficulty in ascertaining its varieties and stages. 
In the Salic laws, and in the Capitularies, we read not only of 
Servi, but of Tributarii, Lidi, and Coloni, who were c\iltivators 
of the earth, and subject to residence upon their lord's estate, 
though not destitute of. property or civil rights. Those who 
appertained to the demesne lands of the crown were called Fis- 
calini. The composition for the murder of one of these was much 
less than that for a freeman. The number of these servile culti- 
vators was undoubtedly great, yet in those early times I should 
conceive, much less than it afterwards became. Property was 
for the most part in small divisions, and a Frank who could 
hardly support his family iipon a petty allodial patrimony was 
not likely to encumber himself with many servants. But the 
accumulation of overgrown private wealth had a natural tend- 
ency to make slavery more fretpient. Where the small pro- 
prietors lost their lands by mere rapine, we may believe that 

9 " Cofltutnes de Beauvoisis," c. 45, p. 25fi. 

1" See Note II., " Tlie Tributarii, Lidi, and Coloni." 



98 



SERFS, OR VILLEIKS. Chap. II. Pabt II. 



their liberty was liardly less endangered. Even where this 
was not the case, yet, as the labor either of artisans or of free 
husbandmen was but sparingly in demand, they were often 
compelled to exchange their liberty for bread. In seasons 
also of famine, and they were not infrequent, many freemen 
sold themselves to slavery." A capitulary of Charles the 
Bald in 864 permits their redemption at an equitable price. 
Others became slaves, as more fortunate men became vassals, 
to a powerful lord, for the sake of his protection. IVIany 
were reduced to tliis state through inability to pay those 
pecuniary compositions for offences which were numerous and 
sometimes heavy in the barbarian codes of law; and many 
more by neglect of attendance on military expeditions of the 
king, the penalty of which was a fine called Heribann, with 
the alternative of perpetual servitude. A source of loss of 
liberty, which may strike us as more extraordinary, was su- 
perstition ; men were infatuated enough to surrender them- 
selves, as well as their properties, to churches and monasteries, 
in return for such benefits as they might reap by the prayers 
of their new masters. 

The characteristic distinction of a villein was his obliga- 
tion to remain upon his lord's estate. He was not only pre- 
cluded from selling the lands upon which he dwelt, but his 
person was bound, and the lord might reclaim him at any 
time, by a suit in a court of justice, if he ventured to stray. 
But, equally liable to this confinement, there were two classes 
of villeins, whose condition was exceedingly different. In 
England, at least from the reign of Henry II., one only, and 
that the inferior species, existed ; incapable of property, and 
destitute of redress, except against the most outrageous in- 
juries. The lord could seize whatever they acquired or in- 
herited, or convey them, apart from the land, to a stranger. 

" The poor parly felt the necessity of selling themselves for subsistence in times of 
famine. " Sulxliilcruiit se paupcrcs servitio," says Gregory of Tours, A. l). 585, " lit 
<liiaiituluiiicuii(|iie (le uliiiiciito jiorrigerent." {\Ah. vii., c. J5.) This long continued 
to be the practice; and [)robably tlie riTiiarkable number of famines which are re- 
corded, especially in the ninth and eleventh centuries,, swelled the sad list of those 
unhappy poor who were reduced to barter liberty for bread. Mr. Wright, in the 
" Arclia>oh>gia," vol. xxx., p. 22:5, has extracted an'entrv from an Anglo-Saxon manu- 
script, where a lady, al)out the time of the Conquest, manumits some slaves, "whose 
heads," as it is sinipl\ and forcibly expressed, " she liad taken from their meat in the 
evil days." K\ il, indeed, were those days in France, when out of seventy-three years, 
the reigns of Hugh Capet and his two successors, forty-eight were years of fannne. 
Evil were the days for five years from 1015, in the whole Wiestern World, when not a 
countrv could Ix; named tliat was not destitute of bread. Tliese were famines, as 
l{:idnlfus (jabler and other contemporary writers tell us, in wliicli mothers ate their 
children, and cliildren their parents; and luunan flesh was sold, with soni<' pretence 
of concealment, in the markets. It is probable that England snlt'eied less than 
France; but so long and frequent a scarcity of necessary food must lun e affected, in 
the latter country, the whole organic frame of society. 



Feudal System. CHARACTERISTICS OF VILLENAGE. 99 

Their tenure bound them to what were called villein services, 
ignoble in their nature and indeterminate in their degree; 
the felling of timber, the carrying of manure, the repairing of 
roads for their lord, who seems to have possessed an equally 
unbounded right over their labor and its fruits. But by the 
customs of France and Germany, persons in this abject state 
seem to have been called serfs, and distinguished from vil- 
leins, who were only bound to fixed payments and duties in 
respect of their lord, though, as it seems, without any legal 
redress if injured by him. " The third estate of men," says 
Keaumanoir, in the passage above quoted, " is that of such as 
are not i'ree ; and these are not all of one condition, for some 
are so subject to their lord that lie may take all they have, 
alive or dead, and imprison them whenever he pleases, being 
accountable to none but Grod ; while others are treated more 
gently, from whom the lord can take nothing but customary 
payments, though at their death all they have escheats to 
him." 

Under every denomination of servitude, the children fol- 
lowed their mother's condition; except in England, where 
the father's state determined that of the children ; on which 
account bastards of female villeins were born free, the law 
presuming the liberty of their father. The proportion of 
freemen, therefore, would have been miserably diminished if 
there had been no reflux of the tide which ran so strongly 
towards slavery. But the usage of manumission made a sort 
of circulation between these two states of mankind. This, 
as is well known, was an exceedingly common practice Avith 
the Romans ; and is mentioned, with certain ceremonies pre- 
scribed, in the Frankish and other early laws. The clergy, 
and especially several popes, enforced it as a duty upon lay- 
men ; and inveighed against the scandal of keejnng Chris- 
tians in bondage. As society advanced in Europe the manu- 
mission of slaves grew more frequent. By tlie indulgence of 
custom in some places, or perhaps by original convention, 
villeins might possess property, and thus ])urchase their own 
redemption. Even where they had no legal title to projierty, 
it was accounted inhuman to divest them of their little 
possession (the peculium of Roman law) ; nor was their pov- 
erty, perhaps, less toleral)le, upon the whole, than that of the 
modern peasantry in most countries of Europe. It was only 
in respect of his lord, it must be remembered, that the villein, 
at least in England, was without rights ; he might inherit, 
purchase, sue in the courts of law ; though, as defendant in a 



100 ABOLITION OF VILLENAGE. Chap. II. Part II. 

real action or suit wherein land was claiuied, he might shelter 
himself under the plea of villenage. The peasants of this con- 
dition were sometimes made use of in war, and rewarded with 
enfranchisement ; especially in Italy, where the cities and the 
petty states had often occasion tt) defend themselves with their 
own p(jpulation ; and in peace the industry of free laborers 
must have been found more productive and better directed. 
Hence the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the number of 
slaves in Italy begin to decrease ; early in the tifteenth a writer 
quoted by Muratori speaks of them as no longer existing. 
The greater part of the peasants in some countries of Germany 
had acquired their liberty before the end of the thirteenth 
century ; in other parts, as well as in all the northern and east- 
ern regions of Europe, they remained in a sort of villenage till 
the present age. Some very few instances of predial servitude 
have been discovered in England so late as the time of Eliza- 
beth, and perhaps they might be traced still lower. Louis 
Hutin, in France, after innumerable particular instances of 
manumission had taken place, by a general edict in 1.S15, 
reciting that his kingdom is denominated the kingdom of the 
Franks, that he would have the fact to correspond with the 
name, emancipates all persons in the royal domains upon pay- 
ing a just composition, as an exam})le for other lords possessing 
villeins to follow. Philip the Long renewed the same edict 
three years afterwards — a proof that it had not been carried 
into execution. ^^ 

§ 7. At the final separation of the French from the Ger- 
man side of Charlemagne's em]nre by the treaty of Verdun in 
843, there was perhaps hardly any difference in the constitution 
of the two kingdoms. If any might have been conjectured to 
have existed, it would be a great(n" independence and fuller 
rights of election in the nobility and people of Germany. l>ut 
in the lapse of another century Franco had lost all her political 
unity, and her kings all their authority ; while the Germanic 
empire was entirely unl)roken under an effectual, though not 
absolute, control of its sovereign. No com]:)arison can be made 
between the power of Charles the Simple and Conrad the 
First, though the former liad tlie shadow of an hereditary 
right, and the latter ^vas chosen from among his equals. A 

'= Prefliiil servitude was not, however, abolished in all parts of France till the Revo- 
lution. Throughout almost the whole jurisdiction of the Parliament of Besan^on the 
l>easants were attached to the soil, not being capable of leaving it without the lord's 
consent ; and that in some places he even inherited their goods in exclusion of the 
kindred. I recollect to have read in some part of Voltaire's correspondence an anec- 
dote of his interference, with that zeal against oppression which is the shining side 
of his moral character, in behalf of some of these wretched slaves of Franche-comte. 



Feudal System. STATE OF FRANCE AND GEPtMANY. 101 

long succession of feeble princes or usurpers, and destructive 
incursions of the Normans, reduced France almost to a dissolu- 
tion of society ; while (J-ermany, under Conrad, Henry, and the 
Othos, found their arms not less prompt and successful against 
revolted vassals than external enemies. The high dignitaries 
were less completely hereditary than they had become in 
France ; they were granted, indeed, pretty regularly, but they 
were solicited as well as granted ; while the chief vassals of 
the French crown assumed them as patrimonial sovereignties, 
to which a royal investiture gave more of ornament than sanc- 
tion. In the eleventh century these imperial prerogatives 
began to lose part of their lustre. The long struggles of the 
princes and clergy against Henry IV. and his son, the revival 
of more effective rights of election on the extinction of the 
house, of Franconia, the exhausting contests of the iSwabian 
emperors in Italy, the intrinsic weakness produced by a law of 
the empire, according to which the reigning sovereign could 
not retain an imperial fief more than a year in his hands, gradu- 
ally prepared that independence of the German aristocracy 
wliich reached its height about the middle of the thirteenth 
century. During this period the French crown had been in- 
sensibly gaining strength ; and as one monarch degenerated 
into the mere head of a confederacy, the other acquired un- 
limited power over a solid kingdom. 

It would be tedious, and not very instructive, to follow the 
details of German public law during the Middle Ages ; nor are 
the more important parts of it easily separable from civil history. 
In this relation they will find a place in a subsequent chapter 
of the present work. France demands a more minute attention; 
and in tracing the character of the feudal system in that coun- 
try, we shall iind ourselves developing the progress of a very 
different polity. 

§ 8. To understand in what degree the peers and barons of 
France, during the prevalence of feudal principles, were in- 
de])endent of the crown, we must look at their leading priv- 
ileges. These may be reckoned : I. The right of coining 
money; II. Tliat of waging private war ; III. The exemption 
from all public tributes, except the feudal aids ; IV. The free- 
dom from legislative control ; and V. The exclusive exercise of 
original judicature in their dominions. Privileges so enormous, 
and so contrary to all principles of sovereignty, might lead us, 
in strictness, to account France rather a collection of states, 
partially allied to each other, tlian a single monarchy. 

I. Silver and gold were not very scarce in the lii'st ages of 



102 PRIVILEGES OF FRENCH VASSALS. Chap. II. Part II. 

the French mouarchy ; but they passed more b}^ weight tlian 
by tale. A lax and ignorant government, which had not 
learned the lucrative mysteries of a royal mint, was not par- 
ticularly solicitous to give its subjects the security of a known 
stamp in their exchanges. In some cities of France money 
appears to have been coined by private authority, before the 
time of Charlemagne ; at least one of his capitularies for- 
bids the circulation of any that had not been stamped in 
the royal mint. His successors indulged some of their vo,s- 
sals with the privilege of coining money for the use of their 
own territories, bu.t not without the royal stamp. About the 
beginning of the tenth century, however, the lords, among 
their other assumptions of independence, issued money with 
no marks but their own. At the accession of Hugh Capet as 
many as a hundred and fifty are said to have exercised this 
power. Even under St. Louis it was possessed by about 
eighty, who, excluding as far as possible the royal coin from 
circulation, enriched themselves at their subjects' expense by 
high duties (seigniorages), which they imposed upon every 
new coinage, as well as by debasing its standard. 

Philip the Fair established royal officers of inspection in 
every private mint. It was asserted in his reign, as a general 
truth, that no subject might coin silver money. In fact, the 
adulteration practised in those baronial mints had reduced 
their pretended silver to a sort of black metal, as it was called 
(vioneta nigra), into which little entered but copper. Silver, 
however, and even gold, were coined by the dukes of Brit- 
tany so long as that lief continued to exist. No subjects ever 
enjoyed the right of coining silver in England without the 
royal stamp and superintendence ^^ — a remarkable proof of 
the restraint in which the feudal aristocracy was always held 
in this country. 

§ 9. — II. The passion of revenge, always among the most 
ungovernable in human nature, acts with such violence iipon 
barbarians, that it is utterly beyond the control of their im- 
perfect arrangements of polity. It seems to them no part of 
the social compact to sacrifice the privilege which nature has 
placed in the arm of valor. Gradually, however, these fiercer 
feelings are blunted, and another passion, hardly less powerful 
than resentment, is brought to play in a contrary direction. 
The earlier ol)ject, accordingly, of jurisprudence is to estab- 
lish a fixed atonement for injuries, as much for the preserva- 

13 I do not extend this to the fact; for in the .anarchy of Stephen's reign botli 
bisliops and barons coined money for tliemselves. — Hoveden, p. 4iK), 



Fkudal System. WAR. — TAXATION. 103 

tion of tranquillity as the prevention of crime. Snch were the 
weregilcls of the barbaric codes, which, for a different purpose, 
I have already mentioned. But whether it were that the 
kindred did not always accept, or the criminal offer, the legal 
composition, or that other causes of quarrel occurred, private 
feuds (faida) Avere perpetually breaking out, and many of 
Charlemagne's capitularies are directed against them. After 
his time all hope of restraining so inveterate a practice was at 
an end ; and every man who owned a castle to shelter him in 
case of defeat, and a sufficient number of dei^endents to take 
the field, Avas at liberty to retaliate upon his neighbors when- 
ever he thought himself injured. It must be kept in mind 
that there was frequently either no jurisdiction to which he 
could appeal, or no power to enforce its awards ; so that we 
may consider the higher nobility of France as in a state of 
nature with res})ect to each other, and entitled to avail them- 
selves of all legitimate grounds of hostility. The right of 
waging private Avar was moderated by Louis IX., checked by 
Philip IV., suppressed by Charles VI. ; but a few vestiges of 
its practice may be found still later. 

§ 10. — III. In the modern condition of governments tax- 
ation is the chief engine of the well-compacted machinery 
which regulates the system. But the early European king- 
doms knew neither the necessities nor the ingenuity of mod- 
ern finance. From their demesne lands the kings of France 
and Lombardy supplied the common expenses of a barbarous 
court. Even Charlemagne regulated the economy of his farms 
Avith the minuteness of a stcAvard, and a large portion of his 
capitv;laries are directed to this object. Their actual revenue 
Avas chiefly derived from free gifts, made, according to an 
ancient German custom, at the annual assemblies of the na- 
tion, from amercements by allodial proprietors for default of 
military service, and from the freda, or fines, accruing to the 
judge out of compositions for murder. These amounted to 
one-third of the Avhole Averegild; one-third of this Avas paid 
over by the count to the royal Exchequer. After the feudal 
government prevailed in France, and neither the heribannum 
nor the Averegild continued in use, there seems to have been 
hardly any source of regular revenue besides the domanial 
estates of the crown; unless Ave may reckon as such, that 
during a journey the king had a prescriptive right to be sup- 
plied Avith necessaries by the toAvns and abbeys through Avhich 
he passed ; commuted sometimes into petty regular payments, 
called droits de gist et de chevauche. Hugh Capet Avas nearly 



104 ROYAL REVENUE IN FRANCE. Chap. II. Part II. 

indigent as king of France, though, as count of Paris and 
Orleans, he might take the feudal aids and reliefs of his vas- 
sals. Several other emoluments of himself and his successors, 
whatever they may since have been considered, were in that 
age rather seigniorial than royal. The rights of toll, of 
customs, of alienage (aubaine), generally even the regale or 
enjoyment of the temporalities of vacant episcopal sees and 
other ecclesiastical benefices, were possessed within their own 
domains by the great feudatories of the crown. They con- 
tributed nothing to their sovereign, not even those aids which 
the feudal customs enjoined. 

The liistory of the royal revenue in France is, however, 
too important to be slightly passed over. As the necessities 
of government increased, several devices were tried in order 
to replenish the Exchequer. One of these was by extorting 
money from the Jews. It is almost incredible to what a length 
this was carried. Usury, forbidden by laAV and superstition to 
Christians, was confined to this industrious and covetous peo- 
ple. It is now no secret that all regulations interfering with 
the interest of money render its terms more rigorous and bur- 
densome. The chiklren of Israel grew rich in despite of in- 
sult and oppression, and retaliated upon their Christian debtors. 
If an historian of Philip Augustus may be believed, they pos- 
sessed almost one-half of Paris. Unquestionably they must 
have had support both at tlie court and in the halls of justice. 
The policy of the kings of France was to employ them as a 
sponge to suck their subjects' money, which they might after- 
wards express with less odium than direct taxation would 
incur. Philip Augustus released all Christians in his domin- 
ions from their debts to the Jews, reserving a fifth part to 
himself. He afterwards ex])elled tlie wliole nation from France. 
But they appear to have returned again — whether by stealth, 
or, as is more probable, by purchasing permission. St. Louis 
twice banished and twice recalled the Jews. A series of alter- 
nate persecution and tolerance was borne by this extraordinary 
people with an invincible perseverance, and a talent of accu- 
mulating riches which kept pace with their plunderers ; till, 
new schemes of finance supplying the turn, they w^ere finally 
expelled under Charles VI., and never afterwards obtained any 
legal establishment in France. 

A much more extensive plan of rapine was carried on by 
lowering the standard of coin. Originally the pound, a money 
of account, was equivalent to twelve ounces of silver; and 
divided into twenty pieces of coin (sous), each equal, conse- 



Feudal System. TAXATION. 105 

quently, to nearly three shillings and four pence of our new 
English money. At the Kevolution the money of France had 
been depreciated in the proportion of seventy-three to one, 
and the sol was about equal to an English halfpenny. This 
Avas the effect of a long continuance of fraudulent and arbi- 
trary government. The abuse began under Philip I. in 1103, 
who alloyed his silver coin with a third of copi)er. So g0(jd 
an example was jiot lost upon subsequent princes ; till, under 
St. Louis, the mark-weight of silver, or eight ounces, was 
equivalent to fifty sous of the debased coin. jSTevertheless 
these changes seem hitherto to have produced no discontent ; 
whether it were that a peo})le neither commercial nor enliglit- 
ened did not readily perceive their tendency ; or, as has been 
ingeniously conjectured, that these successive dinunutions of 
the standard were nearly counterbalanced by an augmentation 
in the value of silver, occasioned by the drain of money dur- 
ing the Crusades, with which they were about contemporane- 
ous. But the rapacity of Philip the Fair kept no measures 
with the public ; and the mark in his reign had become equal 
to eight livres, or a hundred and sixty sous of money. Dissat- 
isfaction, and even tumults, arose in consequence, and he was 
compelled to restore the coin to its standard under St. Louis. 
His successors practised the same arts of enriching their treas- 
ury ; under Philip of Valois the mark was again worth eight 
livres. But the film had now dropjjed from the eyes of the 
people ; and these adulterations of money, rendered more vex- 
atious by continued recoinages of tlie current pieces, upon 
which a fee was extorted by the moneyers, showed in their 
true light as mingled fraud and robbery. 

These resources of government, however, by no means su- 
perseded the necessity of more direct taxation. The kings 
of France exacted money from the roturiers, and particularly 
the inhabitants of towns, within their domains. In this they 
only acted as proprietors, or suzerains ; and the barons took 
the same course in their own lands. Philip Augustus first 
ventured upon a stretch of prerogative, which, in the words 
of his biographer, disturbed all France. He deprived by force 
both his own vassals, who had been accustomed to boast of 
their immunities, and their feudal tenants, of a third part of 
their goods. Such arbitrary taxation of the nobility, who 
deemed that their military service discharged them from all 
pecuniary burdens, France was far too aristocratical a country 
to bear. It seems not to have been repeated ; and his suc- 
cessors generally pursued more legitimate courses. Upon 



106 NO SUPREME LEGISLATION. Chap. II. Part II. 

obtaining any contribution, it was usual to grant letters patent, 
declaring that it had been freely given, and should not be 
turned into precedent in time to come. But in the reign of 
Philip the Fair a great innovation took place in the French 
constitution, which, though it principally affected the method 
of levying money, may seem to fall more naturally under the 
next head of consideration. 

§ 11. — IV. There is no part of the French feudal policy so 
remarkable as the entire absence of all supreme legislation. 
We find it difficult to conceive the existence of a political so- 
ciety, nominally one kingdom and under one head, in which, 
for more than three hundred years, there was wanting the most 
essential attributes of government. It will be requisite, how- 
ever, to take this up a little higher, and inquire what was the 
original legislature of the French monarchy. 

Arbitrary rule, at least in theory, was uncongenial to the 
character of the Northern nations. Neither the power of mak- 
ing laws, nor that of applying them to the circumstances of 
particular cases, was left at the discretion of the sovereign. 
The Lombard kings held assemblies every year at Pavia, where 
the chief officers of the crown and proprietors of lands deliber- 
ated upon all legislative measures, in the presence, and, nomi- 
nally at least, with the consent of the multitude. Frequent 
mention is made of similar public meetings in France by the 
historians of the Merovingian kings, and still more unequivo- 
cally by their statutes. These assemblies have been called 
Parliaments of the Champ de Mars, having originally been 
held in the month of March. But they are supposed by many 
to have gone much into disuse under the later Merovingian 
kings. That of Glo, the most important of which any traces 
remain, was at the close of the great revolution which punished 
Brunehaut for as})iring to despotic power. Whether these as- 
semVjlies were com})osed of any except prelates, great land- 
holders, or what we may call nobles, and the Antrustions of 
the king, is still an unsettled point. It is probable, however, 
not only that the bishops took part in them, but also that the 
presence of the nation was traditionally required in conformity 
to the ancient German usage, which had not been formally 
abolished; while the difficulty of prevailing on a dispersed 
people to meet every year, as well as the enhanced influence of 
the king through his armed Antrustions, soon reduced the free- 
men to little more than spectators from the neighboring dis- 
tricts. 

Although no legislative proceedings of the Merovingian 



Feudal System. LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLIES. 107 

line are extant after 615, it is estimated by early writers that 
Pepin Heristal and liis son Charles Martel restored the na- 
tional council after some interruption ; and if the language of 
certain historians be correct, they rendered it considerably 
popular. 

Pepin the younger, after his accession to the throne, changed 
the month of this annual assembly from March to May ; and 
we have some traces of what took place at eight sessions dur- 
ing his reign. Of his cajjitularies, however, one only is said 
to be made in generali popvli conventu; the rest are enacted in 
synods of bishops, and all without exception relate merely to 
ecclesiastical affairs. And it must be owned that, as in those 
of the first dynasty, Ave find generally mention of the oi)ti- 
mates who met in these conventions, but rarely any word that 
can be construed of ordinary freemen. 

Such, indeed, is the imju'ession conveyed by a remarkal,)le 
passage of Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims during the time of 
Charles the Bald, who has preserved, on the authority of a 
writer contemporary with Charlemagne, a sketch of the Prankish 
government under that great prince. Two assemblies (placita) 
were annually held. In the first, all regulations of importance 
to the public weal for the ensuing year were enacted ; and to 
this, he says, the whole body of clergy and laity repaired ; 
the greater, to deliberate upon what was fitting to be done; 
and the lesser, to confirm by their voluntary assent, not 
through deference to power, or sometimes even to discuss, the 
resolutions of their superiors. In the second annual assembly, 
the chief men and oificers of state were alone admitted, to 
consult upon the most urgent affairs of government. They 
debated, in each of these, upon certain capitularies, or short ])ro- 
posals, laid before them by the king. The clergy and nobles 
met in separate chambers, though sometimes united for tl;e 
purposes of deliberation. In these assemblies, principally, I 
presume, in the more numerous of the two annually summoned, 
that extensive body of laws, the capitularies of Charlemagnts 
were enacted. And tliough it would contradict the testimony 
just adduced from Hincmar to suppose that the lesser free- 
holders took a very effective share in public counsels, yet their 
]n-esence, and the usage of requiring their assent, indicate the 
liberal principles upon which the system of Charlemagne was 
founded. It is continually expressed in his capitularies and 
those of his family that they were enacted by general consent. 
In one of Louis the Debonair we even trace the first germ of 
representative legislation. Every count is directed to bring 



108 POPULAR RIGHTS. Chap. II. Pakt II. 

with him to the general assembly twelve Scabini, if there 
should be so many in his county ; or, if not, should fill up the 
number out of the most respectable persons resident. These 
Scabini were judicial assesso^rs of the count, chosen by the 
allodial proprietors, in the county court, or mallus, though gen- 
erally on his nomination.^* 

The circumstances, however, of the French Empire for sev- 
I'ral subsequent ages were exceedingly adverse to such en- 
larged schemes of polity. The nobles contemned the imbecile 
descendants of Charlemagne ; and the people, or lesser free- 
holders, if they escaped absolute villenage, lost their imme- 
diate relation to the supreme government in the subordination 
to their lord established by the feudal law. Yet we may trace 
the shadow of ancient popular rights in one constitutional 
function of high importance, the choice of a sovereign. His- 
torians who relate the election of an emperor or king of France 
seldom omit to specify the consent of the multitude, as well as 
of tlie temporal and spiritual aristocracy ; and even in solemn 
instruiuMits that record such transactions we find a sort of 
import UKte attached to the popular suffrage. It is surely less 
probable that a recognition of this elective right should have 
been introduced as a mere ceremony, than that the form should 
have survived after length of time and revolutions of govern- 
ment had almost obliterated the recollection of its meaning. 

It must, however, be impossible to ascertain even the theo- 
retical privileges of the subjects of Charlemagne, much more 
to decide how far they were substantial or illusory. We can 
only assert, in general, that there continued to be some mix- 
ture of democracy in the French constitution during the reigns 
of Charlemagne and his first successors. The primeval Ger- 
man institutions were not eradicated. In the capitularies the 
consent of the people is frequently expressed. Fifty years 
after Charlemagne, his grandson Charles the Bald succinctly 
expresses the theory of legislative power. A law, he says, is 
made by the people's consent and the king's enactment. It 
would hardly be warranted by analogy or precedent to inter- 
pret the word peo[)le so very narrowly as to exclude any allo- 
dial proprietors, among whom, however unequal in opulence, 
no legal inequality of rank is supposed to have yet arisen. 

" The Scabini are not to be confoiuuied, as sometimes has been the case, with tlie 
Uachimburgii, who were not chosen by tlie allodial proprietors, but were themselves 
such, or sometimes, periiaps, beneficiaries, summoned by the court as jurors were in 
England. They answered to the pritd'homrnes, boni homines, of biter times ; they 
formed the county or the liuudred court, for the determination of civil and criminal 
causes. 



Feudal System. ASSEMBLIES OF BARONS. 109 

§ 12. But by whatever aiitliority laws were enacted, who- 
ever were the constituent members of national assemblies, they 
ceased to be held in about seventy years from the death of 
Charlemagne. The latest capitularies are of Carloman in 882. 
From this time there ensues a long blank in the history of 
French legislation. The kingdom was as a great lief, or rather 
as a bundle of tiefs, and the king little more than one of a 
number of feudal nobles, differing rather in dignity than in 
power from some of the rest. The royal council was composed 
only of barons, or tenants in chief, prelates, and household 
officers. These now probably deliberated in private, as we 
hear no more of the consenting multitude. Political functions 
were not in that age so clearly separated as we are taught to 
fancy they should be ; this council advised the king in matters 
of government, conhrmed and consented to his grants, and 
judged in all civil and crindnal cases where any peers of their 
court were concerned. 

But, notwithstanding the want of any permanent legislation 
during so long a period, instances occur in wliich the kings of 
France appear to have acted with tlie concurrence of an assem- 
bly more numerous and more particularly summoned than the 
royal council. At such a congress held in 1146 the crusade 
of Louis VII. was undertaken. We find also an ordinance of 
the same prince in some collections, reciting that he had con- 
voked a general assembly at Soissons, where many prelates 
and barons then present had consented and requested that 
private wars might cease for the term of ten years. Tlie 
famous Saladine tithe was imposed upon lay as well as eccles- 
iastical revenues by a similar convention in 1188. And Avhen 
Innocent IV., during his contest with the Emperor Frederick, 
requested an asylum in France, St. Louis, though much in- 
clined to favor him, ventured only to give a conditional per- 
mission, provided it were agreeable to his barons, whom, he 
said, a king of France was bound to consult in such circum- 
stances. Accordingly he assembled the French barons, who 
unanimously refused their consent. 

It was the ancient custom of the kings of France as well 
as of England, and indeed of all those vassals who affected a 
kind of sovereignty, to hold general meetings of their barons, 
called Cours Plenieres, or Parliaments, at the great festivals 
of the year. These assemblies were principally intended to 
make a display of magnificence, and to keep the feudal tenants 
in good-humor ; nor is it easy to discover that they passed in 
anything but pageantry. Some respectable antiquaries have. 



110 LEGISLATIVE SUBSTITUTES. Chap. II. Pakt II. 

however, been of opinion that affairs of state were occasionally 
discussed in them ; and this is certainly by no means incon- 
sistent with probability, though not suthciently established by 
evidence. 

Excepting a few instances, most of which have been men- 
tioned, it does not appear that the kings of the house of Ca- 
pet acted according to the advice and deliberation of any 
national assembly, such as assisted the Norman sovereigns 
of England ; nor was any consent required for the validity 
of their edicts, except that of the ordinary council, chiefly 
formed of their household officers and less powerful vassals. 
This is at first sight very remarkable. For there can be no 
doubt that the government of Henry I. or Henry II. was 
inconi{)aral)ly stronger than that of Louis VI. or Louis VII. 
But this apparent absoluteness of the latter was the result 
of their real weakness and the disorganization of the mon- 
archy. The peers of France were infrequent in their attend- 
ance upon the king's council, because they denied its coercive 
authority. It was a fundamental principle that every feudal 
tenant was so far sovereign within the limits of his tief, that 
he could not be bound by any law without his consent. 
The king, says 8t. Louis in his Establishments, cannot make 
proclamation, that is, declare any new law, in the territory 
of a baron, without Ids consent, nor can the baron do so in 
that of a vavassor. Thus, if legislative jDOwer be essential 
to sovereignty, we cannot in strictness assert the King of 
France to have been sovereign beyond the extent of his 
domainal territory. Nothing can more strikingly illustrate 
the dissimilitude of the French and English constitutions of 
government than the sentence above cited from tlie code of 
St. Louis. 

§ 13. U})on occasions when the necessity of common de- 
liberaticm, or of giving to new provisions more extensive 
scope tlian the limits of a single fief, was too glaring to be 
overlooked, congresses of neighboring lords met in order to 
agree upon resolutions which each of them undertook to ex- 
ecute within his own domains. The king was sometimes a 
contracting party, but without any coercive authority over 
tlie rest. Thus we have what is called an ordinance, but, in 
reality, an agreement, between the king (Philip Augustus), 
the Countess of Troyes or Champagne, and the Lord of Dam- 
pierre, relating to the Jews in their domains ; which agree- 
ment or ordinance, it is said, should endure " until ourselves 
aud the Countess of Troyes, and Guy de Dampierre, who 



Fkudal Ststem. increase OF REGAL POWER. Ill 

make this contract, shall dissolve it with the consent of such 
of our barons as we shall suniuion for that purpose." 

Ecclesiastical councils were another substitute for a regu- 
lar legislature; and this defect in the political constitution 
rendered their encroachments less obnoxious, and almost un- 
avoidable. That of Troyes in 878, composed perhaps in part 
of laymen, imposed a tine upon the invaders of church prop- 
erty. And the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohibited the 
erection of any new fortresses, or the entering into any 
leagues, except against the enemies of religion ; and ordained 
that judges should administer justice gratuitously, and pub- 
lish the decrees of the council four times in the year. 

§ 14. The original exemption of the vassals of the crown 
from legislative control remained unimpaired at the date of 
the Establishments of St. Louis, about 1269 ; and their ill- 
judged confidence in this feudal privilege still led them to 
absent themselves from the royal council. It seems impos- 
sible to doubt that the barons of France might have asserted 
tlie same right which those of England had obtained, that 
of being duly summoned by special writ, and thus have ren- 
dered their consent necessary to every measure of legisla- 
tion. But the nobility did not long continue safe in their 
immunity from the king's legislative power. 

The ultimate source of this increased authority will be found 
in the commanding attitude assumed by the kings of France 
from the reign of Philip Augustus, and particularly in the 
annexation of the two great fiefs of I^ormandy and Toulouse. 
St. Louis, in his scrupulous moderation, forbore to avail him- 
self of all the advantages presented by the circumstances of 
his reign; and his Establishments bear testimony to a state 
of political society which, even at the moment of their pro- 
mulgation, was passing away. The next thirty years after 
his death, with no marked crisis, and with little disturbance, 
silently demolished the feudal system, such as had been es- 
tablished in France during the dark confusion of the tenth 
century. PlLili]i tlie Fair, by helj) of his lawyers and liis 
financiers, found himself, at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, the real master of his subjects. 

§ 15. There was, however, one essential privilege which he 
could not hope to overturn by force — the immunity from tax- 
ation enjoyed by his barons. This, it will be rem'::'mbered, 
embraced the whole extent of their fiefs, and their tenantry of 
every description — the king having no more right to impose a 
tallage upon the demense towns of his vassals than upon them- 



112 RIGHTS OF THE STATES-GENERAL. Chap. II. Pakt II. 

selves. Thus his resources, in point of taxation, were limited 
to his own domains ; including certainly, under Pliilip the Fair, 
many of the noblest cities in France, but by no means sufficient 
to meet his increasing necessities. We have seen already the 
expedients employed by this rapacious monarch — a shameless 
depreciation of the coin, and what was much more justifiable, 
the levying taxes within the territories of his vassals by their 
consent. Of these measures, the first was odious, the second 
slow and imperfect. Confiding in his sovereign authority — 
though recently, yet almost completely, established — and 
little apprehensive of the feudal principles, already grown obso- 
lete and discountenanced, he was bold enough to make an ex- 
traordinary innovation in the French constitution. This was 
the convocation of the States-General, a representative body, 
composed of the three orders of the nation. They were first 
convened in 1302, in order to give more weiglit to the king's 
cause in his great quarrel with Boniface VIII. ; but their 
earliest grant of a subsidy is in 1314. Thus the nobility sur- 
rendered to the crown their last privilege of territorial indepen- 
dence; and, having first submitted to its appellant jurisdiction 
over their tribunals, next to its legislative supremacy, now suf- 
fered their own dependents to become, as it were, immediate, 
and a third estate to rise up almost co-ordinate with them- 
selves, endowed with new franchises, and bearing a new 
relation to the monarchy. 

It is impossible not to perceive the motives of Pliilip in 
embodying the deputies of towns as a separate estate in the 
national representation. He might, no question, have con- 
voked a j)arliament of his barons, and obtained a pecuniary 
contribution, which they would have levied upon their bur- 
gesses and other tenants. But, besides the ulterior })olicy of 
diminishing the control of the barons over tlieir de})endents, 
he had good reason to expect more liberal aid from the im- 
mediate representatives of the people than through the con- 
cession of a dissatisfied aristocracy. 

§ 16. It is very difficult to ascertain the constitutional 
rights of the States-General, claimed or admitted, during forty 
years after their first vocation; but if, indeed, we could im- 
plicitly confide in an historian of the sixteenth century, who 
asserts that Louis Hutin bound liimself and his successors not 
to levy any tax witliout the consent of tlie three estates, the 
problem would find its solution. This ample charter does not 
appear in the French archives ; and though by no means to be 
rejected on that account, when we consider the strong motives 



Feudal System. RIGHTS OF THE STATES-GEXERAL. 113 

fur its destruction, cannot fairly be adduced as an authentic 
fact. Nor can we altogether infer, perhaps, from the collec- 
tion of ordinances, that the crown had ever intentionally di- 
vested itself of the right to impose tallages on its domanial 
tenants. All others, however, were certainly exempted from that 
prerogative ; and there seems to have been a general sentiment 
that no tax whatever could be levied without free consent of 
the estates. Louis Hutin, in a charter granted to the nobles 
and burgesses of Picardy, promises to abolish the unjust taxes 
(maltotes) imposed by his father ; and in another instrument, 
called the charter of Normandy, declares that he renounces for 
himself and his successors all undue tallages and exactions, 
except in case of evident utility. This exception is doubtless 
of perilous ambiguity ; yet, as the charter was literally wrested 
from the king by an insurrectionary league, it might be ex- 
pected that the same spirit would rebel against liis royal in- 
ter})retation of state necessity. His successor, Philip the Long, 
tried the experiment of a gabelle, or exercise upon salt. But 
it produced so much discontent that lie was com|)elled to 
assemble the States-General, and to publish an ordinance de- 
claring that the impost was not designed to be perpetual, and 
that, if a sufficient supply for the existing war could be found 
elsewhere, it should instantly determine. Whether this was 
done I do not discover ; nor do I conceive that any of the sons 
of Philip the Fair, inheriting much of his rapacity and ambi- 
tion, abstained from extorting money without consent. Philip 
of Valois renewed and augmented the duties on salt by his 
own prerogative, nor had the abuse of debasing the current coin 
been ever carried to such a height as during his reign and the 
first years of his successor. These exactions, aggravated by 
tlie smart of a hostile invasion, produced a very remarkable 
concussion in the government of France. 

§ 17. I have been obliged to advert, in another ])lace, to 
the memorable resistance made by the States-General of 
1355 and 1356 to the royal authority, on account of its in- 
separable connection with the civil history of France. ^^ In 
the present chapter the assumption of political influence by 
those assemblies deserves particular notice. Not tluit they 
pretended to restore the ancient constitution of the Northern 
nations, still flourishing in Spain and England, the ])artici- 
pation of legislative power with the crown. Five hundred 
year's of anarchy and ignorance had swept away all remem- 
brance of those general diets in which the capitularies of the 

« Ch.ap. i.,p- 4". 



114 THE STATES-GENERAL. Chap. II. fART 11. 

Carloviugiaii dynasty had been established by common con- 
sent. Charlemagne himself was hardly known to the French 
of the fourteenth century, except as the hero of some silly 
romance or ballad. The States-General remonstrated, in- 
deed, against abuses, and especially the most flagrant of all, 
the adulteration of money ; but the ordinance granting re- 
dress emanated altogether from tlie king, and without the 
least reference to their consent, which sometimes appears to 
be studiously omitted. But the privilege upon wiiich the 
States under John solely relied for securing the redress of 
grievances was that of granting money, and of regulating 
its collection. The latter, indeed, though for convenience it 
may be devolved upon the executive government, appears 
to be incident to every assembly in which the right of taxa- 
tion resides. That, accordingly, which met in 1355 nomi- 
nated a committee chosen out of the three orders, which was 
to sit after their separation, and which the king bound him- 
self to consult, not only as to the internal arrangements 
of his administration, but upon every proposition of peace 
or armistice with England. Deputies were despatched into 
each district to superintend the collection and receive the 
produce of the subsidy granted by the States. These assump- 
tions of power would not long, we may be certain, have left 
the sole authority of legislation in the king, and might, per- 
haps, be censured as usurpation, if the peculiar emergency in 
which France was then placed did not furnish their defence. 

§ 18. But whatever opportunity might now be afforded for 
establishing a just and free constitution in France was 
entirely lost. Charles, inexperienced and surrounded by 
evil counsellors, thought the States-General inclined to en- 
croach upon his rights, of which, in the best part of his life, 
he was always abundantly careful. He dismissed, therefore, 
the assembly, and had recourse to the easy but ruinous ex- 
pedient of debasing the coin. This led to seditions at Paris, 
by which his authority, and even his life, were endangered. 
In February, 1357, three months after the last meeting had 
been dissolved, he was obliged to convoke the States again, 
and to enact an ordinance conformable to the ])etitions ten- 
dered by the former assembly. This contained many excellent 
provisions, both for the redress of abuses and the vigorous 
prosecution of the war against Edward ; and it is ditticult 
to conceive that men who advised measures so conducive to 
the public weal could have been the blind instruments of the 
King of Navarre. But this is a problem in history that we 



Feudal SystexM. THE STATES-GENERAL. 115 

cannot liope to resolve. It appears, however, that in a few 
Aveeks after the promulgation of this ordinance the proceed- 
ings of the reformers fell into discredit, and their commission 
of thirty-six, to whom the collection of the new subsidy, the 
redress of grievances, and, in fact, the whole administration 
of government had been intrusted, became unpopular. The 
subsidy produced much less than they had led the people to 
expect : briefly, tlie usual consequence of democratical emo- 
tions in a monarchy took place. Disappointed by tlie failure 
of hopes unreasonably entertained and improvidently encour- 
aged, and disgusted by the excesses of the violent demagogues, 
the nation, especially its privileged classes, who seem to have 
concurred in the original proceedings of the States-General, 
attached themselves to the part}^ of Charles, and enabled him 
to quell opposition by force. Marcel, provost of the traders, 
a municipal magistrate of Paris, detected in the overt execu- 
tion of a traitorous conspiracy with the King of Navarre, 
was put to death by a private hand. Whatever there had 
been of real patriotism in the States-General, artfully con- 
founded, according to the practice of courts, with these 
schemes of disaffected men, shared in the common obloquy ; 
whatever substantial reforms liad been projected the govern- 
ment thrcAV aside as seditious innovations. Charles, who had 
assumed the title of regent, found in the States-General, 
assembled at Paris in 1359, a very different disposition from 
that which their predecessors had displayed, and publicly re- 
stored all councillors whom in the former troubles he had been 
compelled to discard. Thus the monarchy resettled itself 
on its ancient basis, or, more properly, acquired additional 
stability. 

§ 19. Both John, after the peace of Bretigni, and Cliarles 
V. imposed taxes without consent of the States-General. 
The latter, indeed, hardly ever convoked that assembly. 
Upon his death the contention between the crown and rep- 
resentative body was renewed ; and, in the first meeting 
held after the accession of Charles VI., the government was 
compelled to revoke all taxes illegally imposed since the 
reign of Philip IV. This is the most remedial ordinance, 
perhaps, in the history of French legislation. '' We will, or- 
dain, and grant," says tlie king, " that the aids, subsidies, and 
impositions, of whatever kind, and however imposed, that 
have had course in the realm since the reign of our prede- 
cessor, Philip the Fair, shall be repealed and abolished ; and 
we will and decree that, by the course which the said imposi- 



116 THE STATES-GENERAL. Chap. II. Part II. 

tions have had, we or our successors shall not have acquired 
any right, nor shall any prejudice be wrought to our people, 
nor to their privileges and liberties, which shall be re-estab- 
lished in as full a manner as they enjoyed them in the reign 
of Philip the Fair, or at any time since ; and we will and 
decree that, if any thing has been done contrary to them since 
that time to the present hou.r, neither we nor our successors 
shall take any advantage therefrom." If circumstances had 
turned out favorably for the cause of liberty, this ordinance 
might have been the basis of a free constitution, in respect, 
at least, of immunity from arbitrary taxation. But the coer- 
cive measures of the court and tumultuous spirit of the 
Parisians jiroduced an open quarrel, in which the popular 
party met with a decisive failure. 

It seems, indeed, impossible that a number of deputies, 
elected merely for the purpose of granting money, can possess 
that weight or be invested in the eyes of their constituents 
with that awfulness of station which is required to withstand 
the royal authority. The States-General had no right of re- 
dressing abuses, except by petition — no share in the exercise 
of sovereignty, which is inseparable from the legislative 
power. Hence, even in their proper department of imposing 
taxes, they were supposed incapable of binding their constitu- 
ents without their special assent. Whether it were the timid- 
ity of the deputies, or false notions of freedom, which produced 
this doctrine, it was evidently repugnant to the stability and 
dignity of a representative assembly. Nor was it less ruinous 
in practice than mistaken in tlieory. For as the necessary sub- 
sidies, after b(nng provisionally granted by the States, were 
often rejected l)y their electors, the king found a reasonable 
pretence for dispensing with the concurrence of his subjects 
when he levied contributions upon them. 

The States-General were convoked but rarely under Charles 
VI. and VII., both of Avliom levied money witliout tlieir concur- 
rence. Yet there are remarkal)le testimonies under tlie latter 
of these princes that the sanction of national representatives 
was still esteemed strictly requisite to any ordinance imposing 
a general tax, however the emergency of circumstances might 
excuse a more arbitrary procedure. Thus Charles VII., in 
1436, declares that he has set up again the aids which had 
been previously abolished hy the consent of the three estates. 
And in the important edict establishing the companies of 
ordonnance. which is recited to be done by the advice and 
counsel of the States-General assembled at Orleans, the forty- 



Feudal System. PROVINCIAL ESTATES. 117 

first section appears to bear a necessary construction that no 
tallage could lawfully be imposed without such consent. It 
is maintained, indeed, by some writers, that the perpetual 
taille established about the same time was actually granted by 
these States of 1439, though it does not so appear upon the 
face of any ordinance. And certainly this is consonant to the 
real and recognized constitution of that age. 

But the crafty advisers of courts in the fifteenth century, 
enlightened by experience of past dangers, were averse to 
encountering these great political masses, from which there 
were, even in peaceful times, some disquieting interferences, 
some testimonies of public spirit, and recollections of liberty 
ten apprehend. The kings of France, indeed, had a resource 
which generally enabled them to avoid a convocation of 
the States-General without violating the national franchises. 
From provincial assemblies, composed of the three orders, 
they usually obtained more money than they could have ex- 
tracted from the common representatives of the nation, and 
heard less of remonstrance and demand. Languedoc, in ])ar- 
ticular, had her own assembly of states, and was rarely called 
upon to send deputies to the general body, or representatives 
of what was called the Languedoil. But Auvergne, Normandy, 
and other provinces belonging to the latter division, had 
frequent convocations of their respective estates during the 
intervals of the States-General — intervals which by this 
means were ])rotracted far beyond that duration to wliich the 
exigencies of the crown would otherwise have confined them. 
This was one of the essential differences between the constitu- 
tions of France and England, and arose out of the original 
disease of the former monarchy — the distraction and want of 
unity consequent upon the decline of Charlemagne's family, 
which separated the different provinces, in respect of their in- 
terests and domestic government, from each other. 

§ 20. But the formality of consent, whether by general or 
provincial states, now ceased to be reckoned indispensable. 
Tli.e lawyers had rarely seconded any efforts to restrain arl)i- 
trary power : in their hatred of feudal principles, especially 
those of territorial jurisdiction, every generous sentiment of 
freedom was proscribed ; or, if they admitted that absolute 
prerogative might require some checks, it was such only as 
themselves, not the national representatives, should impose. 
Charles VII. levied money by his own authority. Louis XL 
carried this encroachment to the higliest pitch of exaction. 
It was the boast of courtiers that he first released the king:s 



118 STATES-GENERAL OF TOURS. Chap. II. Part II. 

of France from dependence {hors de ^J«^e) ; or, in other Tvords, 
that he effectually demolished those barriers, which, however 
im})erfect and ill-placed, had imposed some impediment to the 
establishment of despotism. 

§ 21. The States-General met but twice during the reign of 
Louis XI., and on neither occasion for the purpose of grant- 
ing money. But an assembly in tlie ilrst year of diaries 
VIII., the States of Tours in 1484, is too important to be 
overlooked, as it marks the last struggle of the French nation 
by its legal representatives for immunity from arbitrary taxa- 
tion. 

A warm contention arose for the regency upon the acces- 
sion of Charles VIII., between his aunt, Anne de Beaujeu, 
whom the late king had appointed by testament, and the 
princes of the blood, at the head of whom stood the Duke of 
Orleans, afterwards Louis XII, The latter combined to de- 
mand a convocation of the States-General, which accordingly 
took place. The king's minority and the factions at court 
seemed no unfavorable omens for liberty. But a scheme was 
artfully contrived which had the most direct tendency to 
break the force of a popular assembly. The deputies were 
classed in six nations, who debated in separate chambers, and 
consulted each other only \\\)o\\ the result of their respective 
deliberations. It was easy for the court to foment the jealous- 
ies natural to such a partition. Two nations, the Xorman and 
Burgundian, asserted that the right of providing for the re- 
gency devolved, in the king's minority, upon the States-General ; 
a claim of great boldness, and certainly not much founded 
upon precedents. In virtue of this, tliey proposed to form a 
council, not only of the princes, but of certain deputies to be 
elected by the six nations who composed the States. But the 
other four, those of Paris, Aquitaine, Languedoc, and Langue- 
doil (whicli last comprised the central provinces), rejected this 
plan, from wliich the two former ultimately desisted, and the 
choice of councillors was left to the princes. 

A firmer and more unanimous spirit was displayed upon 
the subject of public reformation. The tyranny of Louis 
XL had been so unbounded, that all ranks agreed in calling 
for redress, and the new governors were desirous, at least by 
punishing his favorites, to show their inclination towards a 
change of system. They were very far, however, from ajj- 
proving the propositions of the States-General. These went 
to points which no court can bear to feel touched, though 
there is seldom any other mode of redressing public abuses ; 



Feudal System. SCHEME OF JURISDICTION. 119 

the profuse expense of the royal household, the number of 
pensions and improvident grants, the excessive establishment 
of troops. The States explicitly demanded that the taille 
and all other arbitrary imposts should be abolished, and that 
from henceforward, " according to the natural liberty of 
France," no tax should be levied in the kingdom without the 
consent of the States. It was with great difficulty, and 
through the skilful management of the court, that they con- 
sented to the collection of the taxes payable in the time of 
Charles VII., with the addition of one-fourth as a gift to the 
king upon his accession. This subsidy they declared to be 
granted "by way of gift and concession, and not otherwise, 
and so as no one should from henceforward call it a tax, but a 
gift and concession." And this was only to be in force for 
two years, after which they stipulated that another meeting 
should be convoked. But it was little likely that the govern- 
ment would encounter such a risk ; and the princes, whose 
factious views the States had by no means seconded, felt no 
tem}ttation to urge again their convocation, l^o assembly in the 
annals of France seems, notwithstanding some party selhsh- 
ness arising out of the division into nations, to have conducted 
itself with so much public spirit and moderation ; nor had 
that country, perhaps, ever so fair a prospect of establishing 
a legitimate constitution. 

§ 22. — V. The right of jurisdiction has undergone changes 
in France and in the adjacent countries still more remarka- 
ble than those of the legislative power; and passed through 
three very distinct stages, as the popular, aristocratic, or 
regal influence predominated in the ]iolitical system. The 
Franks, Lombards, and Saxons seem alike to have been jeal- 
ous of judicial authority, and averse to surrendering what 
concerned every man's private right out of the hands of his 
neighbors and his equals. Every ten families are supposed 
to have had a magistrate of their oAvn election; the tithing- 
man of England, the Decanus of France and Lombardy. 
Next in order was the Centenarius or Hundredary, Avhose 
name expresses the extent of his jurisdiction, and who, like 
the decanus, was chosen by those subject to it. But the 
authority of these petty magistrates was gradually confined 
to the less important subjects of legal inquiry. No man, by 
a capitulary of Charlemagne, could be impleaded for his life, 
or liberty, or lands, or servants, in the hundred court. In 
such weighty matters, or by Avay of appeal from the lower 
jurisdiction, the count of the district was judge. He, indeed, 



120 TERRITORIAL JURISDICTION. Chap. II. Part IL 

was appointed by the sovereign ; bnt his power was checked 
by assessors, called Scabini, who liehl their office by the elec- 
tion, or at least the concurrence, of the people. An idtimate 
appeal seems to have lain to the Count Palatine, an officer 
of the royal household ; and sometimes causes were decided 
by the sovereign himself. Such was the original model of 
judicature; but as complaints of injustice and neglect were 
frequently made against the counts, Charlemagne, desirous on 
every account to control them, appointed special judges, called 
Missi Regii, who held assizes from place to place, inquired 
into abuses and maladministration of justice, enforced its 
execution, and expelled inferior judges from their offices for 
misconduct. 

§ 23. This judicial system was gradually superseded by one 
founded upon totally opposite principles, — those of feudal 
privilege, which led to territorial jurisdiction. An allodial 
freeholder could own no jurisdiction but that of the king. 
It was the general prevalence of sub-infeudation which gave 
importance to tlie territorial jurisdictions of the nobility. 
For now the military tenants, instead of repairing to the 
county court, sought justice in that of their immediate lord; 
or rather the count himself, become the suzerain instead of 
the governor of his district, altered the form of his tribunal 
upon the feudal model. A system of procedure so congenial 
to the spirit of the age spread universally over France and 
Germany. The tribunals of the king were forgotten, like his 
laws ; the one retaining as little authority to correct, as the 
other to regulate, the decisions of a territorial judge. The 
rules of evidence were superseded by that monstrous birth 
of ferocity and superstition, the judicial combat, and the 
maxims of law reduced to a few capricious customs, Avhich 
varied in almost every barony. 

These rights of administering justice were possessed by 
the owners of fiefs in very different degrees ; and, in France, 
were divided into the high, the middle, and the low jurisdic- 
tion. The first species alone (la haute justice) conveyed the 
power of life and death ; it was inherent in the baron and 
the chatelain, and sometimes enjoyed by the simple vavas- 
sor. The lower jui'isdictions were not competent to judge in 
capital cases, and consequently forced to send such criminals 
to the court of the superior. But in some places a thief taken 
in the fact might be punished with deatli by a lord who had 
only the low jurisdiction. In England this privilege was 
known by the uncouth terms of Infangthef and Outfangthef. 



Feudal System. TKIAL BY COMBAT. 121 

The high jurisdiction, however, was not very common in 
this countiy, except in the chartered towns. 

Several customs rendered these rights of jurisdiction far 
less instrumental to tyranny than we might infer from their 
extent. While the counts were yet officers of the crown, 
they frequently appointed a deputy, or viscount, to admin- 
ister justice. Ecclesiastical lords, who were prohibited by the 
canons from inflicting capital punishment, and supposed to be 
unacquainted with the law followed in civil courts, or unable 
to enforce it, had an officer by name of advocate, or vidame, 
whose tenure was often feudal and hereditary. The viguiers 
(vicarii), bailiffs, provosts, and seneschals of lay lords were 
similar ministers, though not in general of so permanent a 
right in their offices, or of such eminent station, as the advo- 
cates of monasteries. It seems to have been an established 
maxim, at least in later times, that the lord could not sit 
])ersonally in judgment, but must intrust that function to his 
bailiff and vassals. According to the feudal rules, the lord's 
vassals or peers of his court were to assist at all its proceed- 
ings. And indeed the presence of these assessors was so 
essential to all territorial jurisdiction, that no lord, to what- 
ever rights of justice his fief might entitle him, was qualified 
to exercise them, unless he had at least two vassals to sit as 
peers in his court. 

§ 24. These courts of a feudal barony or manor required 
neither the knowledge of positive law nor the dictates of 
natural sagacity. In all doubtful cases, and especially where 
a crime not capable of notorious proof was charged, the com- 
bat was awarded ; and God, as they deemed, was the judge. ^^ 
The nobleman fought on horseback, with all his arms of at- 
tack and defence ; the plebeian on foot, with his club and 
target. The same were the weapons of the chami)ions to 
whom women and ecclesiastics were permitted to intrust their 
rights. If tlie combat was intended to ascertain a civil right, 
the vanquished party of course forfeited his claim and paid a 
fine. If he fought by proxy, the cliampion was liable to have 
his hand struck off ; a regiilation necessary, perhaps, to obviate 
the corruption of these hired defenders. In criminal cases 
the appellant suffered, in the event of defeat, tlie same 
punishment which the law awarded to the offence of which 
he accused his adversary. Even where the cause was more 

IS Trial bj' combat does not seom to have cstabli^lu'd itself completely in France 
till ordeals went into disuse, which Charlemagne rather encouraged, and which in 
his age, the clergy for the most part approved. 



122 CODE OF ST. LOUIS. Chap. II. Pakt II. 

peaceably tried, and brought to a regular adjudication by the 
court, an appeal for false judgment might, indeed, be made to 
the suzerain, but it could only be tried by battle. And in this 
the appellant, if he would impeacli the concurrent judgment 
of the court below, was compelled to meet successively in 
combat every one of its members ; unless he should vanquish 
them all within the day, his life, if he escaped from so many 
hazards, was forfeited to the law. If fortune or miracle 
should make him conqueror in every contest, the judges were 
equally subject to death, and their court forfeited their juris- 
diction forever, A less perilous mode of a[)peal was to call 
the first judge who pronounced a hostile sentence into the 
field. If the appellant came off victorious in this challenge, 
the decision was reversed, but the court was not impeached. 
But for denial of justice, tliat is, for a refusal to try his suit, 
the plaintiff repaired to the court of the next superior lord, 
and supported his appeal by testimony. Yet even here the 
witnesses might be defied, and the pure stream of justice 
turned at once into the torrent of barbarous contest. 

§ 25. Such was the judicial system of France when St. 
Louis enacted that great code wliich bears tlie name of his 
Establishments. The rules of civil and criminal procedure, as 
well as the principles of legal decisions, are there laid down 
with much detail. But that incomjjarable ])rince, unable to 
overthrow the judicial combat, confined himself to discourage 
it by the example of a wiser jurisprudence. It was abolished 
tliroughout the royal domains. The bailiffs and seneschals 
who rendered justice to the king's immediate subjects were 
bound to follow his own laws. He not only received appeals 
from their sentences in his own court of peers, but listened to 
all complaints with a kind of patriarchal simplicity. " Many 
times," says Joinville, " I have seen the good saint, after hear- 
ing mass, in the summer season, lay himself at the foot of an 
oak in the wood of Vincennes, and make us all sit round him ; 
wlien those who would, came and spake to liim without let of 
any officer, and he would ask aloud if there were any present 
who had suits ; and when they ap|)eared, would bid two of his 
bailiffs determine their cause upon the spot." 

Tlie influence of this new jurisprudence established by St. 
Louis, combined with the great enhancements of the royal 
prerogatives in every other respect, produced a rapid change 
in the legal administration of France. It was, in all civil 
suits, at the discretion of the litigant parties to adopt the law 
of the Establishments, instead of resorting to combat. As 



Feudal System. EOYAL COURTS. I'-^o 

gentler manners prevailed, especially among those who did 
not make arms their profession, the wisdom and equity of the 
new code was naturally preferred. The superstition which 
had originally led to the latter lost its weight through expe- 
rience and the uniform opposition of the clergy. The same 
superiority of just and settled rules over fortune and violence, 
which had forwarded the encroachments of the ecclesiastical 
courts, was now manifested in those of the king. 

§ 26. Philip Augustus, by a famous ordinance in 1190, first 
established royal courts of justice, held by the officers called 
bailiffs or seneschals, who acted as the king's lieutenants in 
his domains. Every barony, as it became reunited to the 
crown, was subjected to the jurisdiction of one of these officers, 
and took the name of a bailliage or seneschaussee ; the former 
name prevailing most in the northern, the latter in the south- 
ern, provinces. The vassals whose lands depended upon, or, 
in feudal language, moved from the superiority of this fief, 
were obliged to submit to the ressort or supreme appellant 
jurisdiction of the royal court established in it. This began 
rapidly to encroach upon the feudal rights of justice. In a 
variety of cases, termed royal, the territorial court was pro- 
nounced incompetent ; they were reserved for the judges of 
the crown ; and in every case, unless the defendant excepted 
to the jurisdiction, the royal court might take cognizance of a 
suit, and decide it in exclusion of the feudal judicature. The 
nature of cases reserved under the name of royal was kept in 
studied ambiguity, under cover of which the judges of the 
crown perpetually strove to multiply them. Vassals were 
permitted to com])lain, in the first instance, to the king's court, 
of injuries committed by tlieir lords. These rapid and violent 
encroachments left the nobility no alternative but armed com- 
binations to support their remonstrances. Philip the Fair 
bequeathed to his successor the task of appeasing the storm 
which his own administration had excited. Leagues were 
formed in most of the northern provinces for the redress of 
grievances, in which the third estate, oppressed by taxation, 
united with the vassals, whose feudal privileges had been 
infringed. Separate charters were granted to each of these 
confederacies by Louis Hutin, which contain many remedial 
provisions against the grosser violations of ancient riglits, 
though the crown persisted in restraining territorial jurisdic- 
tions. Appeals became more common for false judgment, as 
well as denial of right ; and in neither was the combat per- 
mitted. It was still, however, preserved in accusations of 



124 PARLIAMENT OF TAKIS. Chap. II. Pakt II. 

heinous crimes, unsupported by any testimony but that of the 
prosecutor, and was never abolished by any positive law, either 
in France or England. But instances of its occurrence are not 
frequent even in the fourteenth century. 

§ 27. The supreme council, or court of peers, to whose de- 
liberative functions I have already adverted, was also the 
great judicial tribunal of the French crown from the accession 
of Hugh Capet. By this alone the barons of France, or ten- 
ants-in-chief of the king, could be judged. To this court 
ap})eals for denials of justice were referred. It was originally 
composed, as has been observed, of the feudal vassals, co- 
equals of those who were to be tried by it ; and also of the 
household officers, whose right of concurrence, however anom- 
alous, was extremely ancient. But after the business of the 
court came to increase through the multiplicity of appeals, 
especially from the bailiffs established by Philip Augustus in 
the royal domains, the barons found neither leisure nor capa- 
city for the ordinary administration of justice, and reserved 
their attendance for occasions where some of their own orders 
were implicated in a criminal process. St. Louis, anxious for 
regularity and enlightened decisions, made a considerable 
alteration by introducing some councillors of inferior rank, 
chiefly ecclesiastics, as advisers of the court, though, as is 
supposed, Avithout any decisive suffrage. The court now be- 
came known by the name of Parliament. Registers of its 
proceedings were kept, of which the earliest extant are of the 
year 1254. It was still, perhaps, in some degree ambulatory ; 
but by far the greater part of its sessions in the thirteenth 
century were of Paris. The councillors nominated by the 
king, s(mae of them clerks, others of noble rank, but not peers 
of the ancient baronage, acquired insensibly a right of suffrage. 

An ordinance of Philip the Fair, in 1302, is generally sup- 
})osed to have fixed the seat of Parliament at Paris, as well as 
altered its constituent parts. Perhaps a series of progressive 
changes has been referred to a single epoch. But whether by 
virtue of this ordinance, or of more gradual events, the char- 
acter of the whole feudal court was nearly obliterated in that 
of the Parliament of Paris. A systematic tribunal took the 
place of a loose aristocratic assembly. It was to hold two 
sittings in the year, each of two months' duration ; it was 
eonq^osed of two prelates, t*wo counts, thirteen clerks, and as 
many laymen. Great changes were made afterwards in this 
constitution. The nobility, who originally sat there, grew 
weary of an attendance which detained them from war, and 



Fkudai. System. PARLIAMENT OF PARIS. 125 

from tlieir favorite pursuits at home. The bishops were dis- 
missed to their necessary residence upon their sees. As they 
withdrew, a cLass of reguhir hiwyers, originally employed, as 
it appears, in the preparatory business, without any decisive 
voice, came forward to the higlier places, and established a 
complicated and tedious system of procedure, wliich was 
always characteristic of French jurisprudence. They intro- 
duced at the same time a new theory of absolute power and 
unlimited obedience. All feudal privileges were treated as 
encroachments on the imprescriptible rights of monarchy. 
With the natural bias of laAvyers in favor of prerogative con- 
spired that of the clergy, who fled to the king for refuge 
agaiast the tyranny of the barons. In the civil and canon 
laws a system of political maxims was found very uncongenial 
to the feudal customs. The French lawyers of the fourteenth 
and tifteenth centuries frecpiently give their king the title of 
emperor, and treat disobedience to him as sacrilege. 

§ 28. But among these lawyers, although the general ten- 
ants of the crown by barony ceased to appear, there still con- 
tinued to sit a more eminent body, the lay and spiritual peers 
of France, representatives, as it were, of that ancient baronial 
aristocracy. It is a very controverted question at what time 
this exclusive dignity of peerage, a word obviously ai)plicable 
by the feudal law to all persons co-equal in degree of tenure, 
was reserved to twelve vassals. At the coronation of Philip 
Augustus, in 1179, we first perceive the six great feudatories, 
dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, Guienne, counts of Toulouse, 
Flanders, Champagne, distinguished by the offices they per- 
formed in that ceremony. It was natural, indeed, that, by 
their princely splendor and importance, they should eclipse 
such petty lords as Bourbon and Coney, however equal in 
quality of tenure. During the reign of Philip Augustus, six 
ecclesiastical peers, the duke-bishops of Rheims, Laon, and 
Langres, the count-bishops of Beauvais, Chalons, and Noyon, 
were added as a sort of parallel or counterpoise. Their prece- 
dence does not, however, appear to have carried with it any 
other privilege, at least in judicature, than other barons en- 
joyed. But their pre-eminence being fully confirmed, Philip 
the Fair set the precedent of augmenting their original num- 
ber, by conferring the dignity of peerage on the Duke of Brit- 
tany and the Count of Artois. Other creations took place 
subsequently ; but these were confined, during the period com- 
prised in this work, to princes of the royal blood. The peers 
were constant members of the Parliament, from which other 



126 JUIIISDICTION OF PAliLlAMENT. Chap. II. Taut IT. 

vassals holding in chief were never, perhaps, excluded by law, 
but their attendance was rare in the fourteentli century, and 
soon afterwards ceased altogether. 

§ 29. A judicial body composed of the greatest nobles in 
France, as well as of learned and eminent lawyers, must natu- 
rally have soon become politically important. Notwithstand- 
ing their disposition to enhance every royal prerogative, as 
opposed to feudal privileges, the Parliament was not disin- 
clined to see its own protection invoked by the subject. During 
the tempests of Charles VI. 's unhappy reign the Parliament 
acquired a more decided authority, and held, in some de- 
gree, the balance between the contending factions of Orleans 
and Burgundy. This influence was partly owing to one re- 
markable function attributed to the Parliament, which raised 
it much above tlie level of a merely political tribunal, and has 
at various tim^s wrought striking effects in the French mon- 
archy. 

The few ordinances enacted by kings of France in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries were generally by the advice 
of their royal council, in which probably they were solemnly 
declared as well as agreed upon. But after the gradual revo- 
lution of government, which took away from the feudal aris- 
tocracy all control over the king's edicts, and substituted a new 
magistracy for the ancient baronial court, these legislative or- 
dinances were commonly drawn up by the interior council, or, 
what we may call the ministry. They were in some instances 
promulgated by the king in Parliament. Others were sent 
thitlier for registration or entry upon their records. This for- 
mality was by degrees, if not from the beginning, deemed 
essential to render them authentic and notorious, and therefore 
indirectly gave them the sanction and validity of a law. In 
course of time it claimed to itself the right of judging the ex- 
pediency of edicts proceeding from the king, and we find it as 
early as the fifteenth century manifesting pretensions of this 
nature : first, by registering ordinances in such a manner as to 
testify its own unwillingness and disapprobation, and after- 
wards by remonstrating against and delaying the registration 
of laws which it deemed inimical to the public interest. A 
conspicuous proof of this spirit was given in their opposition 
to Louis XL when repealing the Pragmatic Sanction of his 
father — an ordinance essential, in their opinion, to the liber- 
ties of the Galilean Church. In this instance they viltimately 
yielded; but at another time they persisted in a refusal to 
enregister letters containing an alienation of the royal domain. 



Feudal System. JURISDICTION OF PARLIAMENT. 127 

The councillors of Parliament were originally appointed by 
the king ; and they were even changed according to circum- 
stances. But in 1468 Louis XI. published a most important 
ordinance, declaring the presidents and councillors of Parlia- 
ment immovable, except in case of legal forfeiture. This 
extraordinary measure of conferring independence on a body 
Avhich had already displayed a consciousness of its eminent 
privilege by opposing the registration of his edicts, is perhaps 
to be deemed a proof of that short-sightedness as to points of 
substantial interest so usually found in crafty men. But, be 
this as it may, there was formed in the Parliament of Paris an 
independent power not emanating from the royal will, nor liable, 
except through force, to be destroyed by it; which in later 
times became almost the sole depository, if not of what we 
should call the love of freedom, yet of public spirit and attach- 
ment to justice. Prance, so fertile of great men in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, might better spare, perhaps, 
from her annals any class and description of them than her 
lawyers. Doubtless the Parliament of Paris, with its preju- 
dices and narrow views, its high notions of loyal obedience so 
strangely mixed up with remonstrances and resistance, its 
anomalous privilege of objecting to edicts, hardly approved by 
the nation who did not participate in it, and overturned with 
facility by the king whenever he thought fit to exert the 
sinews of his prerogative, was but an inadequate substitute for 
that co-ordinate sovereignty, that equal concurrence of national 
representatives in legislation, which has long been the exclu- 
sive pride of our government, and to which the States-General 
of France, in their best days, had never aspired. No man of 
sane understanding would desire to revive institutions ])otli 
nncongenial to modern opinions and to the natural ordtn- of 
society. Yet the name of the Parliament of Paris must ever 
be respectable. It exhibited xipon various occasions virtues 
from Avhieh human esteem is as inseparable as the sliadow 
from the substance — a severe adherence to principles, an un- 
accommodating sincerity, individual disinterestedness and con- 
sistency." 

§ 30. The principal causes that operated in subverting the 
feudal system may be comprehended under three distinct 



1^ A work has appoared within a few years which throws an abundant lisflit on the 
judicial system, and indeed on the whol<! civil polity of France, as well as other coun- 
tries, during the Jliddle Ages. I allude to " L'F.sprit, Origine, et Trogrfes des fnstitu- 
tions judiciaires des principaux Pays de I'Europe," by M. Meyer, of Amsterdam; es- 
pecially the lirst and third volumes. 



128 DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. Chap. IL Part IL 

heads — the increasing power of the croAvn, the eh^vation of the 
lower ranks, and tlie decay of the feudal principle. 

It has been my object in the last pages to point out the ac- 
quisitions of power by the crown of France in respect of legis- 
lative and judicial authority. The principal augmentations of 
its domain have been historically mentioned in the last chap- 
ter. The French king naturally acted upon a system, in order 
to recover those possessions which the improvidence or neces- 
sities of the Carlovingian race had suffered almost to i'all away 
from the monarchy. This course, pursued with tolerable stead- 
iness for two or three centuries, restored their effective power. 
By escheat or forfeiture, by bequest or purchase, by marriage 
or succession, a number of fiefs were merged in their increasing 
domain. The reunion of so many fiefs was attempted to be 
secured by a legal principle, that the domain was inalienable 
and imprescriptible. This became at length a fundamental 
maxim in the law of France. But there was one species of in- 
feudation so consonant to ancient usage and prejudice that it 
could not be avoided upon any suggestions of policy ; this was 
the investiture of younger princes of the blood with consider- 
able territorial appanages. It is remarkable that the epoch of 
appanages on so great a scale was the reign of St. Louis, whose 
efforts were constantly directed against feudal independence. 
Yet he invested his brother with the comities of Boitou, Anjou, 
and Artois, and his sons with those of Clermont and Alen§on. 
This practice, in later times, produced very mischievous conse- 
quences. 

§ 31. Under a second class of events that contributed to 
destroy the spirit of the feudal system we may reckon the abo- 
lition of villenage, the increase of commerce and consequent 
opulence of merchants and artisans, and especially the institu- 
tions of free cities and boroughs. This is one of the most im- 
portant and interesting steps in the progress of society during 
the Middle Ages, and deserves particular consideration. 

The provincial cities under the Roman Em])ire enjoyed, as 
is well known, a municipal magistracy and the right of internal 
regulation. Nor was it repugnant to the spirit of the Frank or 
Gothic conquerors to leave them in possession of these privi- 
leges. The continuance of municipal institutions has been 
traced in several cities, especially in the sontli of France, from 
the age of the Roman Empire to the twelfth century, when the 
formal charters of communities first a])pear.^^ 

The earliest charters of community granted to towns in 

" See Note III., " Municipal Government." 



Feuhat. System. DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. 129 

France have been commonly referred to the time of Louis VI. 
Noyon, St. Quentin, Laon, and Amiens appear to have been 
the first that received emancipation at the hands of this prince. 
The chief towns in the royal domains were successively ad- 
mitted to the same privileges during the reigns of Louis VL, 
Louis VI L, and Philip Augustus. This example was gradually 
followed by the peers and other barons ; so that by the end 
of the thirteenth century the custom had prevailed over all 
France. This enfranchisement of the town seems to have been 
due, both in the king and his barons, to their pecuniary exi- 
gencies ; for we could hardly doubt that their concessions were 
sold at the highest price, even if the existing charters did not 
exhibit the fullest proof of it. It is obvious, however, that the 
coarser methods of rapine must have grown obsolete, and the 
rights of the inhabitants of towns to property established, 
before they could enter into any compact with their lord for 
tlie purchase of liberty. 

In some cases they were indebted for success to their own 
courage and love of liberty. Oppressed by the exactions of 
their superiors, they had recourse to arms, and united them- 
selves in a common league, confirmed by oath, for the sake of 
redress. Several charters bear witness that this spirit of re- 
sistance was justified by oppression. Louis VII. frequently 
declares the tyranny exercised over the towns to be liis motive 
for enfranchising them. 

§ 32. The privileges which these towns of France derived 
from their charters were surprisingly extensive ; especially if 
we do not suspect some of them to be merely in confirmation 
of previous usages. They were made capable of possessing 
common property, and authorized to use a common seal as the 
symbol of their incorporation. The more oppressive . and ig- 
nominious tokens of subjection, such as the fine paid to the lord 
for permission to marry their children, were abolished. Their 
payments of rent or tribute were limited both in amount and 
as to the occasions when they might be demanded : and these 
were levied by assessors of their own electing. Some obtained 
an exemption from assisting their lord in war ; others were 
only bound to follow him when he personally commanded ; and 
almost all limited their service to one, or, at the utmost, vmy 
few days. If they were persuaded to extend its duration, it 
was, like that of feudal tenants, at the cost of their superior. 
Their customs, as to succession and other matters of i)rivate 
right, were reduced to certainty, and, for the most part, laid 
down in the charter of incorporation. And the observation of 



130 DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. Chap. II. Part II. 

these was secured by the most vahiable privilege which the 
chartered towns obtained — that of exemption from the juris- 
diction, as well of the royal as the territorial judges. They 
were subject only to that of magistrates either wholly elected 
by themselves, or, in some places, with a greater or less parti- 
cipation of choice in the lord. They were empowered to make 
special rules, or, as we call them, by-laws, so as not to contra- 
vene the provisions of their charter or the ordinances of the 
king. 

It was undoubtedly far from the intention of those barons 
who conferred such immunities upon their subjects to relin- 
quish their own superiority and rights not expressly conceded. 
But a remarkable change took place in the beginning of the 
thirteenth century, which affected, in a high degree, the feudal 
constitution of France. Towns, distrustful to their lord's fidel- 
ity, sometimes called in the king 'as guarantee of his engage- 
ments. The first stage of royal interference led to a more 
extensive measure. Philip Augustus granted letters of safe- 
guard to communities dependent upon the barons, assuring to 
them his own protection and patronage. And this was followed 
up so quickly by the court, if we believe some writers, that 
in the next reign Louis VIII. pretended to the immediate 
sovereignty over all chartered towns, in exclusion of their 
original lords. Nothing, perhaps, had so decisive an effect in 
subverting the feudal aristocracy. The barons perceived, too 
late, that, for a price long since lavished in prodigal magnifi- 
cence or useless warfare, they had suffered the source of their 
wealth to be diverted, and tlie nerves of their strengtli to be 
severed. The government ])rudently respected the privileges 
secured l)y cluirter. Pliilip tlie Long established an officer in 
all large, towns to preserve peace by an armed police ; but, though 
subject to the orders of the crown, lie was elected by the bur- 
gesses, and tliey took a mutual oath of fidelity to each other. 
Thus shielded under the king's mantle, they ventured to en- 
croach u])on the neighboring lords, and to retaliate for the long 
oppression of the commonalty. Every citizen was bound by 
oath to stand by the common cause against all aggressors, and 
this obligation was abundantly fulfilled. In order to swell 
their numbers, it became the practice to admit all who came to 
reside within their walls to the rights of burghership, even 
though they were villeins appurtenant to the soil of a master 
from whom they had escaped. Others, having obtained the 
same privileges, continued to dwell in the country ; but, upon 
any dispute witli their lords, called in the assistance of their 



Feudal System. DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. 131 

community In the reign of Cliarles V. tiie feudal independ- 
ence had so completely yielded, that the court began to give 
in to a new policy, which was ever after pursued, that of main- 
taining the dignity and privileges of the noble class against 
those attacks which wealth and liberty encouraged the plebe- 
ians to make upon them. 

The maritime towns of the south of T'rance entered into 
separate alliances with foreign states ; as Narbonne with Genoa 
in 1166, and Montpellier in the next century. At the death 
of Raymond VII., Avignon, Aries, and Marseilles affected to 
set up republican governments ; but they were soon brought 
into subjection. The independent character of maritime towns 
was not peculiar to those of the southern provinces. Edward 
II. and Edward III. negotiated and entered into alliances with 
the towns of Flanders, to which neither their count nor the 
king of France were parties. Even so late as the reign of 
Louis XI. the Duke of Burgundy did not hesitate to address 
the citizens of Rouen, in consequence of the capture of some 
ships, as if they had formed an independent state. This 
evidently arose out of the ancient customs of private warfare, 
which, long after they were repressed by a stricter police at 
home, continued with lawless violence on the ocean, and gave 
a character of piracy to the commercial enterprise of the 
Middle Ages. 

§ 33. Notwithstanding tlie forces which in opposite direc- 
tions assailed the feudal system from the enhancement of royal 
prerogative, and the elevation of the chartered towns, its 
resistance would have been much longer but for an intrinsic 
decay. No political institution can endure which does not 
rivet itself to the hearts of men by ancient prejudice or ac- 
knowledged interest. The feudal compact had originally much 
of this character. Its principle of vitality was warm and 
active. In fulfilling the obligations of mutual assistance and 
fidelity by military service, the energies of friendship were 
awakened, and the ties of moral sympathy superadded to those 
of positive compact. While private wars were at their height, 
the connection of lord and vassal grew close and cordial, in 
proportion to the keenness of their enmity towards others. 

But the nature of feudal obligation was far better adapted 
to the partial quarrels of neighboring lords than to the wars of 
kingdoms. Customs founded upon the poverty of the smaller 
gentry liad limited their martial duties to a period never ex- 
ceeding forty days, and diniinished according to the subdivis- 
ions of the fief. They could undertake an expedition, but not 



132 DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. Chap. II. Part IL 

a campaign; they could burn an open town, but had seldom 
leisure to besiege a fortress. Hence, Avhen the kings of France 
and England were engaged in wars which, on our side at least, 
might be termed national, the inefficiency of the feudal militia 
became evident. It was not easy to employ the military ten- 
ants of England upon the frontiers of Normandy and the Isle 
of France, within the limits of their term of service. When, 
under Henry II. and Richard I., the scene of war was fre- 
quently transferred to the Garonne or the Charente, this was 
still more impracticable. The lirst remedy to which sovereigns 
had recourse was to keep their vassals in service after the ex- 
piration of their forty days, at a stipulated rate of pay. But 
this was frequently neither convenient to the tenant, anxious 
to return back to his household, nor to the king, who could 
not readily defray the charges of an army. Sometiiing was to 
be devised more adequate to the exigency, though less suitable 
to the feudal spirit. By the feudal law the fief was, in strict- 
ness, forfeited by neglect of attendance upon the lord's expe- 
dition. A milder usage introduced a fine, Avhich, however, 
was generally rather heavy, and assessed at discretion. The 
first Norman kings of England made these amercements very 
oppressive. But when a pecuniary payment became the 
regular course of redeeming personal service, which, under 
the name of escuage, may be referred to the reign of Henry 
II., it was essential to liberty that the military tenant should 
not lie at the mercy of the crown. Accordingly, one of the 
most important provisions contained in the Magna Charta 
of John secures the assessment of escuage in Parliament. 
This is not renewed in the charter of Henry III., but the 
practice during his reign was conformable to its spirit. 

The feudal military tenures had superseded that earlier 
system of public defence which called upon every man, and 
especially every land-holder, to protect his country. The rehi- 
tions of a vassal came in place of those of a subject and a 
citizen. This was the revolution of the ninth century. In 
the twelfth and thirteenth another innovation rather more 
gradually i)revailed, and marks the third period in the mili- 
tary history of Europe. Mercenary troops were substituted 
for the feudal militia. Undoubtedly there could never have 
been a time when valor was not to be purchased with money ; 
nor could any employment of surplus wealth be more natu- 
ral either to the ambitious or the weak. But we cannot 
expect to find numerous testimonies of facts of this descri]i- 
tion. In public national history I am aware of no instance 



Feudal System. DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. 133 

of what may be called a regular army more ancient than the 
body-guards, or huscarles, of Canute the Great. These select 
troops amounted to six thousand men, on whom he probably 
relied to insure the sul)jection of England. A code of mar- 
tial law compiled for their regulation is extant in substance ; 
and they are reported to have displayed a military s})irit of 
mutual union, of which their master stood in awe. Harold 
II. is also said to have had Danish soldiers in pay. Tlie 
most eminent example of a mercenary army is that by wliose 
assistance William achieved the conquest of England. His- 
torians concur in representing this force to have consisted of 
sixty thousand men. He afterwards hired soldiers from va- 
rious regions to resist an invasion from Norway. William 
Rufus pursued the same course. Hired troops did not, how- 
ever, in general form a considerable portion of armies till the 
wars of Henry II. and Philip Augustus. Each of these mon- 
archs took into pay large bodies of mercenaries, chiefly, as we 
may infer from their appellation of r>raban9ons, enlisted from 
the Netherlands. These were always disbanded on cessation 
of hostilities ; and, unht for any habits but of idleness and 
license, oppressed the peasantry and ravaged the country with- 
out control. In the French wars of Edward III., the whole, I, 
think, of his army served ^'or pay, and was raised by contract 
with men of rank and influence, who received wages for 
every soldier according to his station and the arms he bore. 
The rate of pay was so remarkably high, that, unless we im- 
agine a vast profit to have been intended for the contractors, 
the private lancers and even archers must have been chiefly 
taken from the middling classes, the smaller gentry, or rich 
yeomanry of England.^" This part of Edward's military sys- 
tem was probably a leading cause of his superiority over 
the French, among whom the feudal tenantry were called 
into the field, and swelled their unwieldy armies at Crecy 
and Poitiers. Both parties, however, in this war employed 
mercenary troops. Philip had 15,000 Italian crossbow-men 
at Crecy. It had for some time before become the trade of 
soldiers of fortune to enlist under leaders of the some descrip- 
tion as themselves in com|)anies of adventure, passing from 
one service to another, unconcerned as to the cause in which 

'» Tlie wages alloweil by contract, in 1340, were for an carl, Cs. Sd. per day; for 
barons and baronets, 4.S.; for knigbts, 2s. ; for squires. Is.; for archers and liobelers 
(liglit cavalry), 6rf. ; for arcliers on foot, .3rf. ; for Welslimen, 2d. These sums, mul- 
tiplied by about 24, to bring them on a level with the present value of money, will 
show the (lay to have been extremely high. The cavalry, of course, furnished them- 
selves with horse and equipments, as well as arms, which were very expensive. 



134 DECLINE OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. Chap. II. Pakt II. 

tliey were retained. These military adventurers played a more 
remarkable part in Italy than in France, though not a little 
troublesome to the latter country. The feudal tenures had at 
least furnished a loyal native militia, whose duties, though 
much limited in the extent, were defined by usage and enforced 
by principle. They gave place — in an evil hour for the |)eo- 
ple, and eventually for sovereigns — to contracts Avith muti- 
nous hirelings, generally strangers, whose valor in the day of 
battle inadequately redeemed their bad faith and vexatious 
rapacity. France, in her calamitous period under Charles VI. 
and Charles VII., experienced the full effects of military 
licentiousness. At the expulsion of the English, robbery and 
disorder were substituted for the more specious plundering of 
war. Perhaps few measures have ever been more popular, as 
few certainly have been more politic, than the establishment of 
regular companies of troops by an ordinance of diaries VII. in 
1444. These may justly pass for the earliest institution of a 
standing army in Europe, though some Italian princes had re- 
tained troops constantly in their pay, but prospectively tc 
hostilities, which were seldom long intermitted. Fifteen com- 
panies were composed each of a hundred men-at-arms, or 
lancers ; and, in the language of that age, the whole body was 
1500 lances. But each lancer had tliree archers, a coutiller, or 
soldier armed with a knife, and a page or valet attached to 
him, all serving on horseback — so that the fifteen companies 
amounted to 9000 cavalry. From these small beginnings, as 
they must appear in modern times, arose the regular army of 
France, which every succeeding king was solicitous to aug- 
ment. The ban was sometimes convoked, that is, the posses- 
sors of fiefs were called upon for military service in subsequent 
ages ; but with more of ostentation than real efficiency. 

§ 34. Tlie feudal compact, thus deprived of its original ef- 
ficacy, soon lost the respect and attachment which had attended 
it. Homage and investiture became unmeaning ceremonies ; 
the incidents of relief and aid were felt as burdensome exac- 
tions. And indeed the rapacity with which these were levied, 
especially by our Norman sovereigns and their barons, was of 
itself sufficient to extinguish all the generous feelings of vassal- 
age. Thi;s galled, as it were, by the armor which he was 
compelled to Avear, but not to use, the military tenant of Eng- 
land looked no longer with contempt upon the owner of lands 
in socage, who held his estate with almost the immunities of 
an allodial proprietor. Buttlie profits wliich the crown reaped 
from wardships, and perhaps tlie prejudices of lawyers, pre- 



Feudal System. EFFECTS OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. 135 

vented the abolition of military tenures till the restoration of 
Charles II. In France the tiefs of noblemen were very un- 
justly exempted from all territorial taxation, though the failles 
of later times had, strictly speaking, only superseded the aids 
to which they had been always liable. The distinction, it is 
well known, was not annihilated till that event which annihi- 
lated all distinctions, the French Revolution. 

It is remarkable that, although the feudal system estab- 
lished in England upon the Conquest broke in very much 
upon our ancient Saxon liberties — though it was attended 
with harsher servitudes than in any other country, particularly 
those two intolerable burdens, wardship and marriage — yet it 
has in general been treated with more favor by English than 
French writers. The hardiness with which the ancient barons 
resisted their sovereign, and the noble struggles which they 
made for civil liberty, especially in that Great Charter, the 
basement at least, if not the foundation, of our free constitu- 
tion, have met with a kindred sympathy in the bosoms of Eng- 
lishmen ; while, from an opposite feeling, the French have 
been shocked at that aristocratic independence which cramped 
the prerogatives and obscured the lustre of their crown. Yet 
it is precisely to this feudal policy that France is indebted for 
that which is ever dearest to her children, their national 
sjdendor and power. That kingdom would have been irretriev- 
ably dismembered in the tenth century, if the laws of feudal 
dependence had not preserved its integrity. Empires of un- 
wieldy bulk, like that of Charlemagne, have several times been 
dissolved by the usurpation of provincial governors, as is re- 
corded both in ancient history and in that of the Mohammedan 
dynasties in the East. What question can there be that the 
powerful dukes of Guienne or counts of Toulouse would have 
thrown off all connection with the crown of France, when 
usurped by one of their equals, if the slight dependence of 
vassalage had not been substituted for legitimate subjection to 
a sovereign ? 

It is the previous state of society, under the grandchildren 
of Charlemagne, which we must always keep in mind, if we 
would appreciate the effects of the feudal system upon the 
welfare of mankind. The institutions of the eleventh cen- 
tury must be compared with those of- the ninth, not with the 
advanced civilization of modern times. If the view that I 
have taken of those dark ages is correct, the state of anarchy 
which we usually term feudal was the natural result of a vast 
and barbarous empire feebly administered, and the cause 



136 EFFECTS OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. Chap. II. Takt II. 

rather than effect of the general establishment of feudal ten- 
ures. These, by preserving the mutual relations of the whole, 
kept alive the feeling of a common country and common duties, 
and settled, after the la})se of ages, into the free constitution 
of England, the firm monarchy of France, and the feudal union 
of Germany. 

The utility of any form of polity may be estimated by its 
effect upon national greatness and security, upon civil liberty 
and private rights, u])on the tranquillity and order of society, 
upon the increase and diffusion of wealth, or upon the general 
tone of moral sentiment and energy. The feudal constitution 
was certainly, as has been observed already, little adapted for 
the defence of a mighty kingdom, far less for schemes of con- 
quest. But as it prevailed alike in several adjacent countries, 
none had anything to fear from the military su])eriority of its 
neighbors. It was this inetticiency of the feudal militia, 
perhaps, that saved Euro})e during the Middle Ages froiu the 
danger of universal monarchy. If an em])ire eqiuilly extensive 
witli that of Charlemagne, and supported by military despot- 
ism, had been formed about the twelfth or thirteenth cen- 
turies, the seeds of commerce and liberty, just then beginning 
to shoot, would have perished, and Europe, reduced to a bar- 
barous servitude, might have fallen before the free barbari- 
ans of Tartary. 

If we look at the fevidal polity as a scheme of civil freedom, 
it bears a noble countenance. To the feudal law it is owing 
that the very names of right and privilege were not swept 
away, as in Asia, by the desolating hand of power. The 
tyranny which, on every favorable moment, was breaking 
through all barriers, would have rioted Avithout control, if, 
wlien the peoi)le were poor and disunited, the nobility had not 
been brave and free. 80 far as tlie sphere of feudality ex- 
tended, it diffused the spirit of liberty and the notions of pri- 
vate right. Every one, I think, will acknowledge this who 
considers the limitations of the services of vassalage, so cau- 
tiously marked in those law-books which are tlie records of 
customs, the reciprocity of obligation between the lord and liis 
tenant, the consent required in every measure of a legislative 
or a general nature, the security, above all, which every vassal 
found in the administration of justice by his peers, and even 
(we may in this sense say) in the trial by combat. The bulk 
of the people, it is true, were degraded by servitude ; but tliis 
had no connection with the feudal tenures. 

The peace and good order of society were not promoted by 



Feudal Systkm. EFFECTS OF FEUDAL SYSTEM. 137 

tliis system. Though private wars did not originate in the 
feudal customs, it is im})ossible to doubt that tliey were per- 
petuated by so convenient an institution, wliich indeed owed 
its universal establishment to no other cause. And as predom- 
inant liabits of warfare are totally irreconcilable with those of 
industry, not merely by the immediate works of destruction 
which render its efforts unavailing, but through that contempt 
of peaceful occupations which they produce, the feudal system 
must have been intrinsically adverse to the accumulation of 
wealth and the improvement of those arts which mitigate the 
evils or abridge the labors of mankind. 

But as a school of moral discipline the feudal institutions 
were perhaps most tb be valued. Society had sunk, for sev- 
eral centuries after the dissolution of the Roman Emjjire, into 
a condition of utter depravity, where, if any vices could be 
selected as more eminently cliaracteristic than others, they 
were falsehood, treachery, and ingratitude. In slowly purging 
off the lees of this extreme corruption, the feudal spirit exerted 
its ameliorating influence. Violation of faith stood first in 
the catalogue of crimes, most repugnant to the very essence of 
a feudal tenure, most severely and promptly avenged, most 
branded by general infamy. The feudal law-books breathe 
throughout a spirit of honorable obligation. The feudal course 
of jurisdiction promoted — what trial by peers is peculiarly 
calculated to promote — a keener feeling and readier percep- 
tion of moral as well as of legal distinctions. And as the 
judgment and sympathy of mankind are seldom mistaken, in 
these great points of veracity and justice, except through the 
temporary success of crimes, or the want of a definite standard 
of right, they gradually recovered themselves when law pre- 
cluded the one and supplied the other. In the reciprocal ser- 
vices of lord and vassal there was ample scope for every mag- 
nanimous and disinterested energy. The heart of man, when 
placed in circumstances which have a tendency to excite them 
will seldom be deficient in such sentiments. No occasions 
could be more favorable than the protection of a faithful sup- 
porter, or the defence of a beneficent suzerain, against such 
powerful aggression as left little prospect except of sharing in 
his ruin. 

From these feelings engendered by the feudal relation has 
sprung up the peculiar sentiment of personal reverence and 
attachment towards a sovereign which we denominate loyalty, 
alike distinguishable from the stupid devotion of Eastern 
slaves and f roin the abstract respect with which free citizens 



138 



NOTES TO CHAPTER II. 



regard their chief magistrate. IMen who had been used to 
swear fealty, to profess subjection, to follow, at home and in 
the field, a feudal superior and his family, easily transferred 
the same allegiance to the monarch. It was a very powerful 
feeling which could make the bravest men put up with slights 
and ill-treatment at the hands of their sovereign ; or call forth 
all the energies of disinterested exertion for one whom they 
never saw, and in whose character there was nothing to esteem. 
In ages when the rights of the community were unfelt, this 
sentiment was one great preservative of society; and, thougli 
collateral or even subservient to more enlarged principles, it is 
still indispensable to tlie tranquillity and permanence of every 
monarchy. In a moral view loyalty has scarcely, perliaps, less 
tendency to refine and elevate tiie lieart than patriotism itself; 
and holds a middle place in the scale of human motives, as 
they ascend from the grosser inducements of self-interest to 
the furtherance of general happiness and conformity to the 
purposes of Infinite Wisdom. 



NOTES TO CHAPTER XL 



I. THE SALIC AND OTHKK LAWS OF THE 
BAUUAKLVNS. 

Tlie Salic law exists in two texts; one 
purely Latin, of which there are lifteen 
manuscripts; the other mingled with Ger- 
man words, of which tliere are three. 
Most have considered the latter to be the 
original; the manuscripts containing it 
are entitled Lex Salica nntiejuissimn, or 
vetustior ; the others generally run Lex 
Sdlica recentiur, or emetuldta. This 
seems to create a presuniplion. But 
others think the pure Latin older than 
the other. But thougli the Salic law in 
its present text is probably not older than 
the seventh century, it must be referred, 
in all its substance, to Gernniny for its 
birthjjlace, and to the period of heathen- 
ism for its date. — (Lehuerou, InslUutions 
Mcrovui qiennes , p. S3.) 

The Kipuarian Franks, Guizot, with 
some apparent reason, takes for the pro- 
genitors of the Austrasians; the Salian, 
of the Neustrians. The former were set- 
tled onthe left bank of the Rhine, as T^oiti, 
or defenders of the frontier, under the 
Empire. These tribes were united under 
one government through the assassination 
of Sigebert at Cologne, in the last years 
of Clovis, who assumed his crown. Such 
a theory might tend to explain the subse- 
quent rivalry of these great portions of 
the Frank monarchy, though it is hardlv 
required for that purpose. The Ripuarian 



code of law is referred by Guizot to 
the reign of Dagobert. In this code 
we liiid, says Guizot, "more of the 
Roman law, more of the royal and eccles- 
iastical power ; its provisions are more 
precise, more extensive, less barbarous ; 
it indicates a farther step in the transition 
from the German to the Roman form of 
social life." — (" Civil, en France," Lecon 
10) 

The Burgundian law, though earlier 
than either of these in their recensions, 
displays a far more advanced state of 
manners. The Burgundinn and Roman 
are placed on the same footing; more is 
borrowed from the civil law ; the royal pow- 
er is more develoi»ed. This code remnineu 
in force after Charlemagne; but Hincmar 
says that few continued to live by it. In 
the Visigothic laws enacted in Spain, 
to the exclusion of the Roman, in 04^, all 
the barbarous elements havedisai)peared; 
it is the work of the clergy, half ecclesias- 
tical, half imperial. 

It has been remarked by acute writers, 
Guizot and Troja, that the Salic law does 
not answer the purpose of a code, being 
silent on some of the most important reg- 
ulations of civil society. The rules of the 
Salic code principally relate to the punish- 
ment or compensation of crimes; and the 
same will be found in our earliest Anglo- 
.'^axon laws. The object of such written 
laws, with a free and barbarous people, 
was not to record their usages, or to lay 



NOTES TO CHAPTER II. 



139 



down rules which natural t'qiiity would 
sugj;cst as the occasion rui,u;lit arise, but 
to prevent the arbitrary iuliictiou of pen- 
alties. Chapter Ixii., '' On >Successious," 
may have been inserted tor the sake of the 
novel provisicfn about Salic lands, which 
could not have formed a part of old Teu- 
tonic customs. 



II. THUiUTAKII, LIDI, AND COLONI. 

These names, though in a general sense 
occupying similar positions in the social 
scale, denote ditl'erent j)ersons. The Cdo- 
ni were Romans, in the sense of the word 
then usual ; that is, they were the cultiva- 
tors of land under the 10m])ire, of wlioui 
we lind abundant notice bolh intheTheo- 
dosian (jode and that of .Justinian. 'J'lie 
Koman colonus was free; he could marry 
a free woman, and have legitimate chil- 
dren ; he could serve in the army, and was 
cai)ahle of property; his peculium, unlike 
that of the absolute slave, could not be 
touched by his master. Nor could his li.xed 
rent or duty be enhanced. He could 
even sue his master for any crime com- 
mitted with respect to iiim, or for undue 
exaction. He was attached, on the other 
haiui, to the soil, and might in certain 
cases receive corporal punishment. Ue 
paid a capitation tax or census to the 
state, the frequent enhancement of which 
contributed to that decline of the agricul- 
tural population whioli preceded the bar 
barian conquest. The documents of the 
Middle Ages furnish abundant proofs of 
the continuance of the coloni in this mid- 
dle state between entire freedom and ser 
vitude. And these were doubtless reck- 
oned among the Tributarii of the Salic 
law, whose composition was fixed at for- 
ty-five solidi; for a slave had no composi 
tion due to his kindred; he was his mas- 
ter's chattel, and to be paid for as such. 
But the tributary was not necessarily a 
colonus. All who possessed no lands 
were subjected by the imperial fisc to a 
personal capitation. To these Iloraaii 
tributaries the barbarian Lidi seem near- 
ly to have corresponded. This was a class 
not quite free born, so that " Francus in- 
genuus" was no tautology, as some have 
fancied, yet far from slaves; without po- 
litical privileges or rights of administer- 
ing justice in the county court, and so 
little favored, that, wliile the Frank ac- 
cused of a theft was to be brought before 
his peers, the lidus, under the name of 
" (lebilior persona," which probably in- 
cluded the Roman tributary, was to be 
hang<'d on the spot. Throughout the 
Salic and Ripuarian codes the ingenuus is 
opposed both to the lidns and to the ser- 
vus; so that the threefold division is in- 
contestable. It corresponds in a certain 
degree to the eilelinr/i, frilinr/i, and lazzi, 
or tlie enrl, cvorl, and thrall of the North- 
ern nations. 



III. MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT. 

The privileges of tlie municipal cities of 
Italy were originally founded on the re- 
jHibilcan institutions of Rome herself ; the 
su])icme power, so far as it was conceded, 
and the choice of nuigislrates, rested with 
the assembly of the citizens. But after 
Tiberius took this away from the Roman 
comilia to vest it in tlie .Senate, it appears 
that this example was followed in every 
provincial city. We lind everywhere a 
class nanu'd " curiales," or " decuriones" 
(synonymous words), in whom, or in 
those elected by them, reside<l whatever 
authority was not reserved to the procon- 
sul or other Itomau magistrate. I5esides 
these there was Defensor Civitatis— a 
standing advocate for the city against the 
oppression of the provincial governor, 
llis office is oidy known by the laws from 
the middle of the fourth century, the 
earliest being of Valentiuiau and Valens, 
in 300; but both Cicero (Epist., xii., 56) 
and I'liny (Epist., x., 3) mention an Ec- 
dicus with something like the same func- 
tions; and Justinian always uses that 
word to express the Defensor Civitatis. 
lie was chosen for five years, not by 
the curiales, but by the citizens at large. 
Nor could any decurion be defensor; he 
was to be taken " ex aliis idoneis perso- 
uis." 

From tlie curiales, or members of the 
curia, there was in later times formed a 
Senate, sometimes called " nobilissima 
curia." The name of Senate was given 
to a privileged class, who, baving served 
through allthe public functions of the cu- 
ria, were entitled to a legal exemption 
in future, and ascended to the digiiitv of 
" clarissimi." Many others, inde]ienilent 
of the decurions, obtained this rather by 
the emperor's favor, or by the perform 
ance of duties which regularly led to it. 
They were nominated by the emperor, and 
might be removed by him; but otherwise 
their rank was hereditary. In this way 
the Senators became an aristocracy, and 
formed the nobility of Gaul. 

Under the domination of the Franks, it 
appears that the functions of "defensor 
civitatis " frequently devolved upon the 
bishop In course of time the bishop be- 
came as much the civil governor of his 
city as the count was of tlie rural district. 
This was a great revolution in the internal 
history of cities, and one which generallv 
led to the discontinuance of their jiopular 
institutions: as that after the reign of 
Charlemagne, if not earlier, we may per- 
haps consider a nuiniciiiality clioosing its 
own officers as an exception, though not a 
very unfrequent one, to the general usage. 
But instances of this are more commonly 
found to the south of the Loire, where 
Roman laws prevailed and the feudal 
spirit was less vigorous than in the North- 
ern provinces. 



140 STATE OF ITALY. Cuap. III. Pakt 1. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HISTORY OF ITALY, FROM THE EXTINCTION OF THE CAR- 
LOVINGIAN EMPERORS TO THE INVASION OF NAPLES BY 
CHARLES VIII. 

PART I. 

§ 1. State of Italy after the Death of Charles the Fat. Coronation of Otho the Great. 
§ 2. Stale of Rome. Coiuad II. § 3. Union of the Kingdom of Italy with the 
Empire. § -1. Period between Conrad. II. and Frederick Barbarossa. § 5. Estab- 
li.shnient of the Normans in Nai)les and Sicily. Roj;er Gniscard. § 6. Rise of the 
Lombard cities. § 7. Their internal wars. Frederick Barbarossa. Destruction of 
Milan. §8. Lombard League. §1). Battle of Legiiano. Peace of Constance. § 10. 
Allairs of Sicily. § 11 ■l'enii)or;il I'rincipalitv of the Popes. § 12. Gnelf and 
Gliibelin Factions. § 13. Otho IV. § H. Frederic II. § 15. Arrangement of 
the Italian Pepublics. § 10. Second Lombard War. § 17. Extinction of tlie 
House of Snnbia. § IS. Causes of the Success of Lombard Republics. Their 
prosperity. § I'J. Their Forms of Government. § ilO. Contentions between the 
Nobility and People. Civil Wars. 

§ 1. At the death of Charles the Fat in 888, that part of 
Italy which acknowledged the supremacy of the Western 
Empire was di\'ided, like France and Germany, among a few 
])owerful vassals, hereditary governors of provinces. The 
principal of these were the dukes of Spoleto and Tuscany, the 
marquises of Ivrea, Susa, and Friuli. The great Lombard 
duchy of Benevento, which had stood against the arms of 
Charlemagne, and comi)rised more than half the present king- 
dom of Naples, liad now fallen into decay, and was straitened 
by the Greeks in Ai)ulia, and by the principalities of Capua 
and Salerno, which had been severed from its own territory, 
on the opposite coast. Tliough princes of the Carlovingian 
line continued to reign in France, their character was too little 
distinguished to challenge the obedience of Italy, already 
separated by family partitions from the Transalpine nations ; 
and the only contest was among her native chiefs. One of 
these, Berenger, originally marquis of Friuli, or the March of 
Treviso, reigned for thirty-six years, but with continually dis- 
puted pretensions ; and after his death the calamities of Italy 
were sometimes aggravated by tyranny, and sometimes by in- 
testine war.^ The Hungarians desolated Lombardy ; the soutl.- 

1 Berenger, being grandson, by a daughter, of Louis the Debonair, may be reckoned 
of the CariovingiaH family. 



Italy. INTERNAL STATE OF HOME. 141 

ern coasts were infested by the Saracens, noAV masters or Sicily, 
riunged in an abyss from which she saw no otlier means of 
extricating herself, Italy lost sight of her favorite independence, 
and called in the assistance of Utho the First, king of Germany. 
Little opposition was made to this powerful monarch. Be- 
renger II., the reigning sovereign of Italy, submitted to hold 
the kingdom of him as a fief. But some years afterwards, new 
disturbances arising, Utho descended from the Alps a second 
time, deposed Berenger, and received at the hands of Pope 
John XII. the imperial dignity, which had been suspended for 
nearly forty years (a. d. 962). 

§ 2. Every ancient prejudice, every recollection, whether of 
Augustus or of Cliarlemague, had led the Italians to annex the 
notion of sovereignty to the name of Roman emperor ; nor were 
Utho, or his two immediate descendants, by any means inclin(Hl 
to waive these supposed prerogatives, wliich they were well able 
to enforce. Most of the Lombard princes acquiesced without 
apparent repugnance in the new German government, which was 
conducted by Utlio the Great with much prudence and vigor, 
and occasionally with severity. The citizens of Lonibardy were 
still better satisfied with a change that insured a more tranqiul 
and regular administration than they had experienced under the 
preceding kiugs. But in one, and that the chief of Italian cities, 
very different sentiments were prevalent. We find, indeed, a 
considerable obscurity spread over the internal history of Rome 
during the long period from the recovery of Italy by Belisarius 
to the end of the eleventh century. The popes appear to have 
possessed some measure of temporal power, even while the city 
was professedly governed by the exarchs of Ravenna, in the 
name of the Eastern Empire. This power became more exten- 
sive after her separation from Constantinople. It was, however, 
subordinate to the undeniable sovereignty of the new imperial 
family, who were supposed to enter upon all the rights of their 
predecessors. There Avas always an imperial officer, or ])refect, 
in that city, to render criminal justice ; an oath of allegiance to 
the emperor was taken by the people ; and upon any irregular 
election of a pope, a circumstance by no means unusual, the 
emperors held themselves entitled to interpose. But the spirii:, 
and even the institutions of the Romans were republican. 
Amidst the darkness of the tenth century, which no contem- 
porary historian dissipates, we faintly distinguish the awful 
names of senate, consuls, and tribunes, the domestic magistracy 
of Rome. These shadows of past glory strike us at first with 
surprise ; yet there is no improbability in the supposition that a 



142 HENRY 11. AND AKDOIN. Chap. 111. rAiu 1. 

city so renowned and populous, and so happily sheltered from 
the usurpation of the Lombards, might have preserved, or niiglit 
afterwards establish, a kind of municipal government, whicli it 
would be natural to dignify with those august titles of antiquity. 
During that anarchy Avhich ensued upon the fall of the Carlo- 
vingian dynasty, the Romans acquired an independence which 
they did not deserve. The city became a prey to the most 
terrible disorders ; the papal chair was sought for at best by 
bribery or controlling influence, often by violence and assassina- 
tion ; it was fllled by such men as naturally rise by such means, 
whose sway was jirecarious, and generally ended either in tlieir 
murder or degradation. For many years the supreme pontiifs 
were forced iqjon the church by two women of high rank but 
infamous reputation, Tiieodora and her daughter Marozia. The 
kings of Italy, whose election in a diet of Lombard princes and 
bishops at Roncaglia was not conceived to convey any jireten- 
sion to the sovereignty of Rome, could never obtain any decided 
influence in papal elections, which were the object of struggling 
factions among the resident nobility. In tliis temper of tlie 
Ronuxns, they were ill disposed to resume habits of obedience to 
a foreign sovereign. The next year after Otho's coronation tliey 
rebelled, the pope at their head (a.d. 9G3) ; but were, of course, 
subdued without ditflculty. The same republican spirit broke 
out whenever the emperors were absent in Germany, especially 
during the minority of Otho III., and directed itself against the 
temporal superiority of the pope. But when that emperor 
attained manhood, he besieged and took the city, crushing all 
resistance by measures of severity ; and especially by the exe- 
cution of Crescentius, a leader of the ])0})ular faction, to whose 
instigation the tumultuous license of Rome was principally as- 
cribed. 

§ 3. At the death of Otho III. without children, in 1002, 
the compact beween Italy and the emperors of the house 
of Saxony was determined. Her engagement of fidelity was 
certainly not applicable to every sovereign whom tlie ])rinces 
of Germany might raise to their tlirone. Accordingly, Ar- 
doin, marquis of Ivi-ea, was elected king of Italy. But a Ger- 
man ]>arty existed among the Lombard princes and bishops, 
to which his insolent demeanor soon gave a pretext for in- 
viting Henry II., the new king of Germany, collaterally re- 
lated to their late sovereign. Ardoin was deserted by most 
of the Italians, but retained his former subjects in Piedmont, 
and disputed the crown for many years with Henry, who 
passed very little time in Italy. During this period there 



Italy. CONRAD II. 143 

was hardly any recognized government ; and tlie Lombards 
became more and mure accustomed, through necessity, to 
protect themselves, and to provide for their own internal 
police. Meanwhile the German nation had become odious 
to the Italians. The rude soldiery, insolent and addicted to 
intoxication, were engaged in frequent disputes with the 
citizens, wherein the latter, as is nsual in similar cases, were 
exposed hrst to the summary vengeance of the troops, and 
afterwards to penal chastisement for sedition. In one of 
these tumults, at the entry of Henry II. in 1004, the city of 
Pavia was burned to the ground, wliich inspired its inhabit- 
ants with a constant animosity against the emperor. Upon 
his death in 1024, the Italians were disposed to break once 
more their connection with Germany, which had elected as 
sovereign Conrad, duke of Franconia. They offered tlieir 
crown to Robert, king of France, and to William, duke of 
Guienne ; but neither of them was imprudent enough to in- 
volve himself in the difficult and faithless politics of Italy. 
Eribert, archbishop of Milan, accompanied by some other 
chief men of Lombardy, repaired to Constance, and tendered 
the crown to Conrad, which he was already disposed to claim 
as a sort of dependency upon Germany (a.d. 1024). It does 
not appear that either Conrad or his successors were ever 
regularly elected to reign over Italy ; but whether this cere- 
mony took place or not, we may certainly date from that time 
the subjection of Italy to the Germanic body. It became an 
unquestionable maxim that the votes of a few German princes 
conferred a right to the sovereignty of a country which had 
never been conquered, and which had never formally recog- 
nized this superiority. But it was an equally fundamental 
rule that the elected king of Germany could not assume the 
title of Roman Emperor until his coronation by the pope. 
The middle appellation of King of the Romans was invented 
as a sort of a})proximation to the imperial dignity. Rut it 
was not till the reign of Maximilian that the actual coronatic^i 
at Rome was dispensed with, and the title of emperor taken 
immediately after the election. 

§ 4. The period between Conrad of Franconia and Frederick 
Barbarossa, or from about the middle of the eleventh to that 
of the twelfth century, is marked by three great events in 
Italian history ; the struggle between the em])ire and the pa- 
pacy for ecclesiastical investitures, the establishment of the 
Norman kingdom in Na])les, and the formation of distinct and 
nearly iudepeudent republics among the cities of Lombardy. 



144 THE NORMANS AT AYERSA. Chap. III. Part I. 

The first of these will liiid a more appropriate place in a sub- 
sequent chapter, where I shall trace the progress of ecclesias- 
tical power. But it produced a long and almost incessant 
state of disturbance in Italy ; and should be mentioned at 
present as one of the main causes which excited in that country 
a systematic opposition to the imperial authority. 

The southern provinces of Italy, in the beginning of the 
eleventh century, were chiefly subject to the Greek empire, 
which had latterly recovered part of its losses, and exhibited 
some ambition and enterprise, though without any intrinsic 
vigor. They were governed by a lieutenant, styled Catapan,^ 
who resided at Bari, in Apnlia. On the Mediterranean coast 
three duchies, or rather republics, of Naples, Gaeta, and 
Amalfi, had for several ages preserved their connection with 
the Greek empire, and acknowledged its nominal sovereignty. 
The Lombard principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, 
had much declined from their ancient splendor. The Greeks 
were, however, not likely to attempt any further conquests : 
the Court of Constantinople had relapsed into its usual indo- 
lence; nor had they much right to boast of successes rather 
due to the Saracen auxiliaries whom they hired from Sicily. 
No momentous revolution, apparently, threatened the south 
of Italy, and least of all could it be anticipated from what 
quarter the storm Avas about to gather. 

§ 5. The followers of Rollo, who rested from plunder and 
piracy in the quiet possession of Normandy, became devout 
professors of the Christian faith, and jmrticularly addicted 
to the custom of pilgrimage, which gratified their ciiriosity 
and spirit of adventure. In small bodies, well armed on ac- 
count of the lawless character of the countries through which 
they passed, the Norman pilgrims visited the shrines of 
Italy and even the Holy Land. Some of the^e, very early 
in the eleventh century, were engaged by a Lombnrd prince 
of Salerno against the Saracens, who had invaded his terri- 
tory ; and through that siiperiority of valor, and i)erhaps of 
corporal strength, which this singular peo})le seem to have 
possessed above all other Europeans, they made surprising 
havoc among the enemy. This exploit led to fresh engage- 
ments, and these engagements drew new adventurers from 
Normandy ; they founded the little city of A versa, near 
Capua, and were employed by the Greeks against the Sar- 
acens of Sicily. But, though performing splendid services in 
this war, they were ill repaid by their ungrateful employers ; 

- Catapnnus, from Kara nai', one employed in general administration of affairs. 



Italy. SUCCESSES OF THE NORMAN'S 145 

and being by no means of a temper to ])ear with injury, tliey 
revenged themselves by a sudden invasion of Apulia. This 
province was speedily subdued, and divided among twelve 
Norman counts ; but soon afterwards Robert Guiscard, one of 
twelve brothers, many of whom were renowned in these Ital- 
ian wars, acquired the sovereignty ; and, adding Calabria to 
his conquests, put an end to the long dominion of the Eastern 
emperors in Italy. He reduced the principalities of Salerno and 
Benevento ; in the latter instance sharing the spoil with the 
pope, who took the city to himself, while Robert retained the 
territory. His conquests in Greece, which he invaded with 
the magnificent design of overthrowing the Eastern Empire, 
were at least equally splendid, though less durable (a.d. 
1061). Roger, his younger brother, undertook, meanwhile, the 
romantic enterprise of conquering tlie island of Sicily with a 
small body of Norman volunteers. But the Saracens were 
broken into petty states, and discouraged by the bad success 
of their brethren in Spain and Sardinia. After many years of 
war Roger became sole master of Sicily, and took the title of 
count. The son of this prince, upon the extinction of Robert 
Guiscard's posterity, united the two Norman sovereignties, and, 
subjugating the free republics of Naples and Amalfi, and the 
principality of Capua, established a boundary which has 
hardly been changed since his time (a.d. 1127). 

The first successes of these Norman leaders were viewed un- 
favorably by the popes. Leo IX. marched in person against 
Robert Guiscard with an army of German mercenaries, but was 
beaten and made prisoner in tliis unwise enterprise, the scan- 
dal of which nothing but good-fortune could have lightened. 
He fell, however, into the hands of a devout peo})le, who im- 
plored liis absolution for the crime of defending themselves ; 
and, whether through gratitude or as the price of his libera- 
tion, invested them with tlieir recent conquests in Apulia, as 
fiefs of the Holy See. This investiture was repeated and en- 
larged as the popes, especially in their contention with Henry 
IV. and Henry V., found the advantage of using tlie Normans 
as faithful auxiliaries. Finally, Innocent II., in 1139, con- 
ferred upon Roger the title of King of Sicily. It is difficult to 
understand by wliat pretence these countries could be claimed 
by the See of Rome in sovereignty, unless by virtue of the 
pretended donation of Constantine, or that of Louis the Debo- 
nair, which is hardly less suspicious ; and least of all liow Inno- 
cent II. could surrender the liberties of the city of Naples, 
whether that was considered as an independent republic or as 



146 SUCCESSES OF THE NORMANS. Chap. III. Part I. 

a portion of the Greek empire. But the JSTorraans, who had 
no title but their swords, were naturally glad to give an ap- 
pearance of legitimacy to their conquest ; and the kingdom of 
Naples, even in the hands of the most powerful J>rinces in 
Europe, never ceased to pay a feudal acknowledgment to the 
chair of St. Peter. 

§ 6. The revolutions which time brought forth on the op- 
posite side of Italy were still more interesting. Under the 
Lombard and French princes every city with its adjacent 
district was subject to the government and jurisdiction of a 
count, who Avas himself subordinate to the' duke or marquis 
of the ])rovince. From these counties it was the practice of 
the first German emperors to dismember particular towns or 
tracts of country, granting them upon a feudal tenure to rural 
lords, by many of whom, also, the same title was assumed. 
Tluis by degrees the authority of the original officers was con- 
fined almost to the walls of their own cities ; and in many 
cases the bishops obtained a grant of the temporal govern- 
ment, and exercised the functions which had belonged to the 
count. 

It is impossible to ascertain the time at which the cities of 
Lombardy began to assume a republican form of government, 
or to trace with precision the gradations of their ]>rogress. 
These cities were far more populous and better defended than 
those of France ; they had learned to stand sieges in the Hun- 
garian invasions of the tenth century, and had acquired the 
right of protecting themselves by strong fortifications. Those 
which had been placed under the tem])oral government of their 
bishops had peculiar advantages in struggling for emancipation. 
This circumstance in the state of Lombardy I consider as 
higlily important towards exjilaining the s\ibsequent revolu- 
tion. Notwithstanding several exceptions, a Churchman was 
less likely to be bold and active in command than a soldier ; 
and the sort of election which was always necessary, and 
sometimes more than nominal, on a vacancy of the See, kept 
up among the citizens a notion that the authority of their 
bisho}) and chief magistrate emanated in some degree from 
themselves. In many instances, especially in the Church of 
Milan, the earliest, perhaps, and certainly the most famous of 
Lombard republics, there occurred a disputed election ; two, or 
even three, competitors claimed the archiepiscopal functions, 
and were compelled, in the absiMice of the emi)crors, to obtain 
the exercise of them by means of their own faction among the 
citizens. 



Italy. PROGRESS OF LOMBARD CITIES. 147 

These were the general causes which, operating at various 
times during the eleventh century, seem gradually to have 
produced a republican form of government in the Italian 
cities. But this part of history is very obscure. The ar- 
chives of all cities before the reign of Frederick Barbarossa 
have perished. We perceive, however, throughout the elev- 
enth century, that the cities were continually in warfare with 
each other. This, indeed, was according to the manners of 
that age, and no inference can absolutely be drawn from it 
as to tlieir internal freedom. But it is observable that their 
chronicles speak, in recording these transactions, of the peo- 
ple, and not of their leaders, which is the true republican 
tone of history. Thus, in the Annals of Pisa, we read, under 
the years 1002 and 1004, of victories gained by the Pisans 
over the people of Lucca; in 1006, that the Pisans and 
Genoese conquered Sardinia. These annals, indeed, are not 
by a contemporary writer, nor perhaps of much authority. 
But we have an original account of a war that broke out in 
1057, between Pavia and Milan, in which the citizens are 
said to have raised armies, made alliances, hired foreign 
troops, and in every respect acted like independent states. 
There was, in fact, no power left in the empire to control 
them. The two Henrys IV. and V. were so much embar- 
rassed during the quarrel concerning investitures, and the 
continual troubles of Germany, that they were less likely to 
interfere with the rising freedom of the Italian cities than to 
purchase their assistance by large concessions. Henry IV. 
granted a charter to Pisa, . in 1081, full of the most impor- 
tant privileges, promising even not to name any marquis of 
Tuscany without the people's consent ; and it is possible that 
althoiigh the instruments have perished, other places might 
obtain similar advantages. However this may be, it is cer- 
tain that before the death of Henry V., in 1125, almost all 
the cities of Lomhardy, and many among those of Tuscany, 
were accustomed to elect their own magistrates, and to act 
as independent communities in waging war and in domestic 
government. 

The territory subjected originally to the count or hisliop 
of these cities had been reduced, as I mentioned above, l)y 
numerous concessions to the rural nobility. But the new re- 
publics, deeming themselves entitled to all which their former 
governors had once possessed, began to attack their nearest 
neighbors, and to recover the sovereignty of all their ancient 
territory. They besieged the castles of the rural counts, 



148 LOMBAED ACQUISITIONS. Chap. III. Part I. 

and successively reduced tliem into siibjection. They sup- 
pressed some minor communities, which had been formed 
in imitation of themselves by little towns belonging to their 
district. Sometimes they purchased feudal superiorities or 
territorial jurisdictions, and, according to a policy not unu- 
sual with the stronger party, converted the rights of property 
into those of government. Hence, at the middle of the 
twelfth century, we are assured by a contemporary writer 
that hardly any nobleman could be found, except the Mar- 
quis of jVIontferrat, who had not submitted to some city. 
We may except also, I should presume, the families of Este 
and Malaspina, as well as that of Savoy. Muratori produces 
many charters of mutual compact between the nobles and 
the neighboring cities ; whereof one invariable article is, 
that the former should reside within the walls a certain 
number of months in the year. Tlie rural nobility, thus de- 
prived of the independence which had endeared their castles, 
imbibed a new ambition of directing the municipal govern- 
ment of the cities, Avhieh consequently, during this period of 
the republics, fell chiefly into the hands of the superior fam- 
ilies. It was the sagacious policy of the Lombards to invite 
settlers by throwing open to them the privileges of citizen- 
ship, and sometimes they even bestowed them by compulsion. 
Sometimes a city, imitating the Avisdom of ancient Rome, 
granted these privileges to all the inhabitants of another. 
Thus the principal cities, and especially Milan, reached, before 
the middle of the twelfth century, a degree of jiopulation 
very far beyond that of the capitals of the great kingdoms. 
Within their strong walls and deep trenches, and in the 
midst of their Avell-peopled streets, the industrious dwelt 
secure from the license of armed pillagers and the o})])ressions 
of fcnidal tyrants. Artisans, whom .the military land-holders 
contemned, acquired and deserved the right of bearing arms 
for their own and the public defence. Their occupations 
became liberal, because they were the foundation of their 
political franchises ; the citizens were classed in companies 
according to their respective crafts, each of Avhich had its 
tribune or standard-bearer (gonfalonier), at whose command, 
when any tumult arose or enemy threatened, they rushed in 
arms to muster in the market-place. 

But, unhappily, we cannot extend the sympathy which in- 
stitutions so full of liberty create to the national conduct 
of these little republics. The love of freedom was alloyed 
by that restless spirit, from which a democracy is seldom ex- 



Italy. THEIR MUTUAL ANIMOSITIES. 149 

empt, of tyrannizing over weaker neighbors. They played 
over again tlie tragedy of ancient Greece, with all its cir- 
cumstances of inveterate hatred, unjust ambition, and atro- 
cious retaliation, though with less consummate actors upon 
the scene. Among all the Lombard cities, Milan was the 
most conspicuous, as well for power and popidation as for the 
abuse of those resources by arbitrary and ambitious conduct. 
Thus, in 1111, they razed the town of Lodi to the ground, 
distributing the inhabitants among six villages, and subject- 
ing them to an unrelenting despotism. Thus, in 1118, they 
commenced a war of ten years' duration with the little city of 
Como ; but the surprising perseverance of its iidiabitants pro- 
cured for them better terms of capitulation, though they lost 
their original independence. The Crenionese treated so 
harshly the town of Crema that it revolted from them, and 
put itself under the ])rotection of Milan. Cities of more 
equal forces carried on interminal)le hostilities by wasting 
each other's territory, destroying the harvests, and burning 
the villages. 

The sovereignty of the emperors, meanwhile, though not 
very effective, was in theory always admitted. Their name 
was used in public acts, and appeared upon the coin. When 
they came into Italy they had certain customary supplies of 
provisions, called fodrum regale, at the expense of the city 
where they resided ; during their presence all inferior magis- 
tracies were suspended, and the right of jurisdiction devolved 
upon them alone. But such was the jealousy of the Lombards 
that they built the royal palaces outside their gates ; a pre- 
caution to which the empei'ors were compelled to submit. 
This was at a very early time a subject of contention between 
the inliabitants of I'avia and Conrad XL, whose palace, seated 
in the heart of the city, they had demolished in a sedition, and 
were unwilling to rebuild in that situation. 

§ 7. Such was the condition of Italy when Frederick Bar- 
barossa, duke of Suabia, and nephew of the last emperor, Con- 
rad III., ascended the throne of Germany (a.d. 1152). His 
accession forms the commencement of a new period, the dura- 
tion of which is about one hundred years, and which is ter- 
minated by the death of Conrad IV., the last emperor of the 
house of Suabia. It is characterized, like the former, by three 
distinguishing features in Italian history ; the victorious 
struggle of the Lombard and other cities for independence, the 
final establishment of a temporal sovereignty over the middle 
provinces by the popes, and the union of the kingdom of 
Naples to the dominions of tlie liouse of Sual)ia. 



150 FREDERICK BARBAROSSA. Chap. III. Part I. 

Ill Frederick Barbarossa the Italians found a very different 
sovereign from the two last emperors, Lothaire and Conrad 
III., who had seldom appeared in Italy, and with forces quite 
inadequate to control such insubordinate subjects. The dis- 
tinguished valor and ability of this prince rendered a severe 
and arbitrary temper, and a haughty conceit of his imperial 
rights, more formidable. He believed that, as successor of 
Augustus, he inherited the kingdoms of the world. In the 
same right, he more powerfully, if not more rationally, laid 
claim to the entire prerogatives of the E-oman emperors over 
their own subjects ; and in this the professors of the civil law 
— which was now diligently studied — lent him their aid with 
the utmost servility. To such a disposition the self-government 
of the Lombard cities appeared mere rebellion. Milan es- 
pecially, the most renowned of them all, drew down upon her- 
self his inveterate resentment. He found, unfortunately, too 
good a pretence in her beliavior towards Lodi. Two natives of 
that ruined city threw themselves at the emperor's feet, im- 
[doring him, as the ultimate source of justice, to redress the 
wrongs of their country. It is a striking ])roof of the terror 
insi)ired by Milan that the consuls of Lodi disavowed the 
coni[)laints of their countrymen, and the inhabitants trembled 
at the danger of provoking a summary vengeance, against 
which the imperial arms seemed no protection. The Milanese, 
however, abstained from attacking the people of Lodi, though 
they treated with contempt the emperor's order to leave them 
at liberty. Frederick meanwhile came into Italy, and held a 
diet at Roncaglia, wdiere complaints poured in from many 
quarters against the Milanese. Pavia and Cremona, their an- 
cient enemies, were impatient to renew hostilities under the 
imperial auspices. Brescia, Tortona, and Crema were allies, 
or rather dependents, of Milan. Frederick soon took occasion 
to attack the latter confederacy. Tortona was compelled to 
surrender, and levelled to the ground. But a feudal army was 
soon dissolved ; the emperor had much to demand his attention 
at Rome, where he was on ill terms with Adrian IV. ; and 
when the imperial troops were withdrawn from Lombardy, the 
Milanese rebuilt Tortona, and exijelled the citizens of Lodi 
from their dwellings. Frederick assembled a fresh army, to 
whicli almost every city of Lombardy, willingly or by force, 
contributed its militia. It is said to have exceeded a hundred 
thousand men. The Milanese shut themselves up within their 
walls; and perhaps might have dehed the imperial forces, if 
their immense population, which gave them confidence in 



Italy. CAPTURE OF MILAN. 151 

arms, had not exposed them to a different enemy. Milan was 
obliged by hnnger to capitulate upon conditions not very 
severe, if a vanquished peo})le could ever safely rely upon the 
convention that testifies their submission. 

Frederick, after the surrender of Milan, held a diet at Ron- 
caglia, where the effect of his victories was fatally perceived 
(a.d. 1158). The bishops, the higher nobility, the lawyers, vied 
with one another in exalting his ])rerogatives. He defined the 
regalian rights, as they were called, in such a manner as to 
exclude the cities and private proprietors from coining money, 
and from tolls or territorial dues, which they had for many 
years possessed. These, however, he permitted them to retain 
for a pecuniary stipulation. A more important innovation was 
the appointment of magistrates, with the title of podesta, to 
administer justice concurrently with the consuls ; but he soon 
proceeded to abolish tlie latter office in many cities, and tD 
throw the whole government into the hands of his own magis- 
trates. He prohibited the cities from levying war against each 
other. It may be presumed that he sliowed no favor to Milan. 
The ca})itulation was set at naught in its most express provis- 
ions ; a podesta was sent to supersede the consuls, and part of 
the territory taken away. Whatever might be the risk of resist- 
ance, and the Milanese had experience enough not to undervalue 
it, they were determined rather to see their liberties at once 
overthrown than gradually destroyed by a faithless tyrant. 
They availed themselves of the absence of his army to renew 
the war. Its issue was more calamitous than that of the last. 
Almost all Lombardy lay patient under subjection. The small 
town of Crema, always the faithful ally of Milan, stood a mem- 
orable siege against the imperial army ; but the inhabitants 
were ultimately compelled to capitulate for their lives, and the 
vindictive Cremoneze razed their dwellings to the ground. But 
all smaller calamities were forgotten when the great city of 
Milan, worn out by famine rather than subdued by force, was 
reduced to surrender at discretion. Lombardy stood in anxious 
suspense to know the determination of Frederick respecting this 
ancient metropolis, the seat of the early Christian emperors, and 
second only to Rome in the hierarchy of the Latin Church. A 
delay of three weeks excited fallacious hopes ; but at tlie end of 
that time an order was given to the Milanese to evacuate their 
habitations. The deserted streets were instantly occupied by 
the imperial army ; the people of Pavia and Cremona, of Lodi 
and Como, were commissioned to revenge themselves on the 
respective quarters of the city assigned to them ; and in a few 



152 LEAGUE OF LOMBARDY. Chap. III. Part I. 

days the pillaged cliurches stood alone amidst the ruins of what 
had been Milan (a.d. 11(;2). 

There was now little left of that freedom to which Lombardy 
had aspired : it was gone like a pleasant dream, and she awoke 
to the fears and miseries of servitude. Frederick obeyed the 
dictates of his vindictive temper, and of the jjolicy usual among 
statesmen. He abrogated the consular regimen in some even of 
the cities which had supported him, and established his podesta 
in their place. This magistrate was always a stranger, fre- 
quently not even an Italian ; and he came to his office Avith all 
those prejudices against the people he was to govern which cut 
off every hope of justice and humanity. The citizens of Lom- 
bardy, especially the Milanese, who had been dispersed in the 
villages adjoining their ruined capital, were unable to meet the 
])eri)etual demands of tribute. In some parts, it is said, two- 
thirds of the i)roduce of their lands, the only wealth that re- 
mained, were extorted from them by the imperial officers. It 
was in vain that they prostrated themselves at the feet of Fred- 
erick. He gave at the best only vague promises of redress ; 
they were in his eyes, rebels ; his delegates had acted as faith- 
ful officers, whom, even if they had gone a little beyond his 
intentions, he could not be expected to punish, 

§ 8. But there still remained at the heart of Lombardy, the 
strong principle of national liberty, imperishable among the 
perishing armies of her patriots, inconsumable in the confla- 
gration of her cities. Those whom private animosities had led 
to assist the German conqueror, blushed at the degradation of 
their country, and at the sliare they had taken in it. A league 
was secretly formed, in which Cremona, one of the chief cities 
on the imperial side, took a prominent part. Those beyond 
the Adige, hitlierto not much engaged in the disputes of Cen- 
tral Lombardy, had already formed a separate confederacy, to 
secure themselves from encroacliments which appeared the 
more unjust, as they had never borne arms against the em])eror. 
Their flrst successes corresponded to the justice of tlieir cause; 
Frederick was repulsed from the territory of Verona — a fortu- 
nate augury for the rest of Lond)ardy (a.d. 1164). These two 
clusters of cities on the east and west of the Adige now united 
themselves into the famous Lombard league, the terms of 
which were settled in a general diet. Their alliance was to 
last twenty years, during which they pledged themselves to 
mutual assistance against any one who should exact more from 
them than they had been used to perform from the time of 
Henry to the first coming of Frederick into Italy ; implying 



Italy. LEAGUE OF LOMBARDY. 153 

in this the recovery of their elective ma,gistracies, their rights 
of war and peace, and those lucrative privileges whicli, under 
the name of regalian, had been Avrested from them in the diet 
of Roncaglia. 

§ 9. This union of the Lombard cities was formed at a very- 
favorable juncture. Frederick had, almost ever since his ac- 
cession, been engaged in open hostility with the See of Rome, 
and was pursuing the fruitless policy of Henry IV., who had 
endeavored to substitute an anti-pope of his own faction for' the 
legitimate pontiff. In the prosecution of this scheme he had 
besieged Rome with a great army, which, the citizens resisting 
longer than he expected, fell a prey to the autumnal pestilence 
which visits the neighborhood of that capital. The flower of 
German nobility was cut off by this calamity, and the emperor 
recrossed the Alps, entirely unable for the present to withstand 
the Lombard confederacy. Their first overt act of insurrec- 
tion was the rebuilding of Milan ; the confederate troops all 
joined in this undertaking ; and the Milanese, still numerous, 
though dispersed and persecuted, revived as a powerful repulj- 
lic. Lodi was conii)elled to enter into the league ; Pavia alone 
continued on the imperial side. As a check to Pavia and to 
the Marquis of Montferrat, the most potent of the independent 
nobility, the Lombards planned the erection of a new city be- 
tween the confines of these two enemies in a rich plain to the 
south of the Po, and bestowed upon it, in compliment to the 
pope, Alexander III., the name of Alessandria. Though, from 
its hasty construction, Alessandria was even in that age deemed 
rude in appearance, it rapidly became a thriving and populous 
city. The intrinsic energy and resources of Lombardy were 
now made manifest. Frederick, who had triumphed by their 
disunion, was unequal to contend against their league. After 
several years of indecisive war, the emperor invaded the 
Milanese territory ; but the confederates gave him battle, and 
gained a complete victory at Legnano (a.d. 1176). Frederick 
escaped alone and disguised, from the field, with little hope of 
raising a fresh army, though still reluctant, from shame, to ac- 
quiesce in the freedom of Lombardy. He was at length per- 
suaded, through the mediation of the republic of Venice, to 
consent to a truce of six years, the provisional terms of which 
were all favorable to the league. It was weakened, however, 
by the defection of some of its own members ; Cremona, which 
had never cordially united with her ancient enemies, made sep- 
arate conditions with Frederick, and suffered herself to be 
named among the cities on the imperial side in the armistice. 



154 PEAGE OF CONSTANCE. Chap. III. Paut I. 

Tortona and even Alessandria followed the same course during 
the six years of its duration — a fatal testimony of unsubdued 
animosities, and omen of the calamities of Italy. At the ex- 
piration of the truce, Frederick's anxiety to secure the crown 
for his son overcame his jjride, and the famous peace of Con- 
stance established tlie Lombard republics in real independence 
(A.D. 1183). 

By the treaty of Constance the cities were maintained in the 
enjoyment of all the regalian rights, whether within their walls 
or in their district, which they could claim by usage. Those 
of levying war, of erecting fortiiications, and of administering 
civil and criminal justice, were specially mentioned. The noni- 
imition of their consuls, or other magistrates, was left abso- 
lutely to the citizens ; but they were to receive the investiture 
of their office from an imperial legate. The customary tributes 
of ])rovision during the emperor's residence in Italy were 
l)reserved ; and he was authorized to appoint in every city a 
judge of appeal in civil causes. The Lombard league was con- 
lirmed, and the cities were permitted to renew it at their own 
discretion ; but they Avere to take, every ten years, an oath of 
lidelity to the emperor. This just compact preserved, along 
with every security for the liberties and welfare of the cities, 
as much of the imperial prerogatives as could be exercised by 
a foreign sovereign consistently with the people's happiness. 

§ 10. Frederick did not attempt to molest the cities of 
Loml)ardy in tlie enjoyment of those privileges conceded by 
the treaty of Constance. His ambition was diverted to a new 
scheme for aggrandizing the house of Suabia by the marriage 
of his eldest son Henry with Constance, the aunt and heiress 
of William II., king of Sicily. That kingdom, which the first 
monarch Iloger had elevated to a high pitch of renown and 
])ower, fell into decay through the misconduct of his son 
William, surnamed the Bad, and did not recover mucli of its 
lustre under the second William, though styled the Good. His 
death without issue was apparently no remote event ; and 
Constance was the sole legitimate survivor of the royal family. 
It is a curious circumstance that no hereditary kingdom appears 
absolutely to have excluded females from its throne, except 
that which from ifs magnitude was of all the most secure from 
falling into the condition of a province. The Sicilians felt too 
late tiie defect of their constitution, which permitted an inde- 
pendent people to be transferred, as the dowry of a woman, 
to a foreign prince, by whose ministers they might justly ex- 
pect to be insulted and oppressed. Henry, whose marriage 



Italy. AFFAIKS OF SICILY. 155 

with Constance took place in 11S6, and who succeeded in her 
right to the throne of Sicily three years afterwards, was exas- 
perated by a courageous but unsuccessful effort of the Norman 
barons to preserve the crown for an illegitimate branch of the 
royal family ; and his reign is disgraced by a series of atrocious 
cruelties. The power of the house of Suabia was now at its 
zenith on each side of the Alps ; Henry received the imperial 
crown the year after his father's death in the third crusade, 
and even prevailed upon the princes of Germany to elect his 
infant son Frederick as his successor. But his own premature 
decease clouded the prospects of his family : Constance survived 
him but a year ; and a cliild of four years old was left with the 
inheritance of a kingdom which his father's severity had ren- 
dered disaffected, and whicli the leaders of German merce- 
naries in his service desolated and dis]iuted. 

§ 11. During the minority of Frederick IT., from 1106 to 
lUlG, the papal chair was filled by Innocent III., a name 
second only, and hardly second, to that of Gregory VII. 
Young, noble, and intre])id, he united with the accustomed 
spirit of ecclesiastical usurpation, which no one had ever 
carried to so high a point, the more worldly ambition of con- 
solidating a separate principality for the Holy See in the 
centre of Italy. The real or spurious donations of Con- 
stantine, Pepin, Charlemagne, and Louis, had given rise to a 
perpetual claim on the part of the popes to very extensive 
dominions ; but little of this had been effectuated, and in 
Rome itself they were thwarted by the prefect — an officer 
who swore fidelity to the emperor — and by the insubordinate 
spirit of the people. In the very neighborhood the small 
cities owned no subjection to the capital, and were ju'obably 
as much self-governed as those of Lombardy. One is trans- 
ported back to the earliest times of the re])ublic in reading of 
the desperate wars between Rome and Tiljur or Tusculum ; 
neither of which was subjugated till the latter part of the 
twelfth century. At a farther distance were the duchy of 
Spoleto, the march of Ancona, and what had been the ex- 
archate of Ravenna, to all of which the popes had more or less 
grounded pretensions. Early in the last-mentioned age, the 
famous Countess Matilda, to whose zealous protection Gregory 
VII. had been eminently indebted during his long dispute with 
the emperor, granted the reversion of all her possessions to 
the Holy See, first in the lifetime of Gregory, and again under 
the pontificate of Paschal III. These were very extensive, 
and held by different titles. Uf her vast imperial fiefs, 



156 INNOCENT III. Chap. III. Part I. 

Mantua, Modena, and Tuscany, she certainly could not dispose. 
The duchy of Spoleto and march of Ancona were supposed to 
rest upon a different footing. These had been formerly among 
the great fiefs of the kingdom of Italy. They are commonly 
considered as her allodial or patrimonial property ; yet it is 
not easy to see how, being herself a subject of the empire, she 
could transfer even her allodial estates from its sovereignty. 
Nor, on the other hand, can it apparently be maintained that 
she was lawful sovereign of countries which had not long 
since been imperial fiefs, and the suzerainty over which had 
never been renounced. The original title of the Holy See, 
therefore, does not seem incontestable even as to this part of 
Matilda's donation. It is certain, however, that the emperors 
kei)t })ossession of the whole during the twelfth century, and 
treated both S[)oleto and Ancona as parts of the empire, not- 
withstanding continual remonstrances from the Iloman pon- 
tiffs. Frederick Barbarossa, at the negotiations of Venice in 
1177, promised to restore the ])atrimony of Matilda in fifteen 
years ; but at the close of that period Henry VI. was not dis- 
posed to execute tliis arrangement, and granted the county in 
fief to some of his German followers. Upon his death, the 
circumstances were favorable to Innocent HI. The infant 
King of Sicily had been intrusted by Constance to his guard- 
iansliip. A double election of Philip, brother of Henry VI., 
and of Otho, duke of Brunswick, engaged the princes of Ger- 
many, who had entirely overlooked the claims of young 
Frederick, in a doubtful civil war. Neither party was in a 
condition to enter Italy ; and the imperial dignity was vacant 
for several years, till, the death of Bhilip removing one com- 
petitor, Otlio IV., whom the pope had constantly favored, was 
crowned emperor. During this interval the Italians had no 
superior, and Innocent availed himself of it to maintain the 
pretensions of the See. These he backed by the production 
of rather a questionable document, the will of Henry VL, said 
to have been found among the baggage of Marquard, one of 
the German soldiers who had been invested with fiefs by the 
late emperor. The cities of what we now call the ecclesiastical 
state had in the twelfth century their own municipal govern- 
ment like those of Lombardy ; but they were far less able to 
assert a complete independence. They gladly, therefore, put 
themselves under the protection of the Holy See, which held 
out some prospect of securing them from Marquard and other 
rapacious partisans, without disturbing their internal regula- 
tions. Thus the duchy of Spoleto and march of Ancona sub- 



Italy. GUELFS AND GHIBELINS. 157 

mitted to Innocent III. ; but he was not strong enough to keep 
constant possession of such extensive territories, and some 
years afterwards adopted the prudent course of granting An- 
cona in fief to the Marquis of Este. He did not, as may be 
supposed, neglect his authority at home ; the Prefect of Home 
was now compelled to swear allegiance to the pope, which put 
an end to the regular imperial supremacy over that city, and 
the privileges of the citizens were abridged. This is the proper 
era of that temporal sovereignty which the bishops of Rome 
possess over their own city, though still prevented by various 
causes, for nearly three centuries, from becoming unquestioned 
and unlimited. 

§ 12. In the wars of Frederick Barbarossa against Milan 
and its allies, we have seen the cities of Londjardy divided, 
and a considerable number of them firmly attached to the im- 
perial interest. The jealousies long existing between the dif- 
ferent classes, and only suspended by the national struggle 
which terminated at Constance, gave rise to new modifications 
of interests, and new relations towards the empire. About 
the year 1200, or perhaps a little later, the two leading parties 
which divided the cities of Lombardy, and whose mutual an- 
imosity — having no general subject of contention — required 
the association of a name to direct <is well as invigorate its 
prejudices, became distinguished by the celebrated appellations 
of GuELFS and Ghibelins ; the former adhering to the papal 
side, the latter to that of the emperor. These names were de- 
rived from Germany, and had been the rallying word of faction 
for more than half a century in that country before they were 
transported to a still more favorable soil. The Guelfs took 
their name from a very illustrious family, several of whom 
had successively been Dukes of Bavaria in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries. The heiress of the last of these inter- 
married with a younger son of the house of Este, a noble 
family settled near Padua, and possessed of great estates on 
each bank of the lower Po. They gave birth to a second line 
of Guelfs, from whom the royal house of Brunswick is de- 
scended. The name of Ghibelin is derived from a village in 
Franconia, whence Conrad the Salic came, the progenitor, 
througli females, of the Suabian emperors. At the election of 
Lothaire in 1125, the Suabian family were disappointed of 
what they considered almost an hereditary possession ; and at 
this time an hostility appears to have commenced between 
them and the house of Guelf, who were nearly related to 
Lothaire. Henry the Proud and his son Henry the Lion, 



158 OTHO IV. Chap. III. Pakt I. 

representatives of the latter family, were frequently joerse- 
cuted by the Snabian emperors ; but their fortunes belong to 
the history of Germany. Meanwhile the elder branch, though 
not reserved for such glorious destinies as the Guelfs, continued 
to flourish in Italy ; the marquises of Este were by far the 
most powerful nobles in Eastern Lombardy, and about the end 
of the twelfth century began to be considered as the heads of 
the Church party in their neighborhood. They were frequently 
chosen to the office of podesta, or chief magistrate, by the cities 
of Eoniagna ; and in 1208 the people of Ferrara set the fatal 
exami)le of sacrificing their freedom for tranquillity by electing 
Azzo VII., marcpiis of Este, as their lord or sovereign. 

§ 13. Otho IV. was son of Henry the Lion, and consequently 
head of the Guelfs. On his obtaining the imjjerial crown (a.d. 
11*.)<S), the prejudices of Italian factions were diverted out of 
tlieir usual channel. He was soon engaged in a quarrel with 
the })ope, whose hostility to the empire was certain, into what- 
ever hands it might fall. In iMilan, however, and generally in 
the cities which had belonged to the Lombard league against 
Frederick I,, hatred of the house of Suabia prevailed more 
than jealousy of the imperial prerogatives ; they adhered to 
names rather than to principles, and supported a Guelf em- 
peror even against the po|:)e. Terms of this description, having 
no definite relation to principles which it might be trouble- 
some to learn and defend, are always acceptable to mankind, 
and have the peculiar advantage of precluding altogether that 
spirit of compromise and accommodation by which it is some- 
times endeavored to obstruct their tendency to hate and injure 
each other. From this time, every city, and almost every 
citizen, gloried in one of these barbarous denominations. In 
several cities the imperial party predominated through hatred 
of their neighbors, who espoused that of the Church. Thus 
the inveterate feuds between Pisa and Florence, Modena and 
Bologna, Cremona and Milan, threw them into opposite fac- 
tions. But there was in every one of these a strong party 
against that which ])revailed, and consequently a Guelf city 
frocpiently became Ghibelin, or conversely, according to the 
fluctuations of the time. 

§ 14. The change to which we have adverted in tlie pol- 
itics of the Guelf party lasted only during the reign of Otho 
IV. When the heir of the house of Suabia grew up to man- 
hood, Innocent, who, though his guardian, liad taken little 
care of his interests, as long as he flattered himself with the 
hope of finding a Guelf emperor obedient, placed the young 



Italy. FREDERICK II. 159 

Frederick at the head of an opposition composed of cities 
always attaclied to his family, and of such as implicitly fol- 
lowed the See of Kome. He met with considerable success 
both in Italy and Germany, and, after the death of Otho, re- 
ceived the imperial crown (a.d. 1212). But he had no longer 
to expect any assistance from the pope who conferred it. 
Innocent was dead, and Honorius III., his successor, could 
not behold without apprehension the vast power of Frederick, 
supported in Lombardy by a faction which balanced that of 
the Church, and menacing the ecclesiastical territories on the 
other side by the possession of Naples and Sicily. This king- 
dom, feudatory to Eome, and long her hrmest ally, was now, 
by a fatal connection which she had not been able to prevent, 
thrown into the scale of her most dangerous enemy. Hence 
the temporal dominion which Innocent III. had taken so much 
pains to establish, became a very precarious possession, exposed 
on each side to the attacks of a power that had legitimate pre- 
tensions to almost every province composing it. The life of 
Frederick II. was wasted in an unceasing contention with the 
Church, and with his Italian subjects, whom she excited to 
rebellions against him. Without inveighing, like the poi)ish 
writers, against this prince, certainly an encourager of letters, 
and endowed with many eminent qualities, we may lay to his 
charge a good deal of dissimulation ; I will not add ambition, 
because I am not aware of any period in the reign of Frederick 
when he was not obliged to act on his defence against the 
aggression of others. But if he had been a model of virtues, 
such men as Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Innocent IV., 
the popes with whom he had successively to contend, would 
not have given him resjjite while he remained master of 
Naples as well as the Empire. 

It was the custom of every pope to urge princes into a 
crusade, which the condition of Palestine rendered indispen- 
sable, or, more pro})erly, des|)erate. But this great ])iece of 
supererogatory devotion had never yet been raised into an 
absolute duty of their station, nor had even ])rivate persons 
been ever required to take up the cross by compulsion. 
Honorius III., liowever, exacted a vow from Frederick, be- 
fore he conferred upon him the imperial crown, tliat he 
would undertake a crusade for the deliverance of Jerusa- 
lem. Frederick submitted to this engagement, which per- 
haps he never designed to keep, and certainly endeavored 
afterwards to evade. Tliough he became by marriage nomi- 
nal king of Jerusalem, liis excellent understanding was not 



160 THE GUELFS AND GHIBELINS. Chap. III. Paet I. 

captivated with so barren a prospect, and at length liis delays 
in the performance of his vow provoked Gregory IX. to issue 
against him a sentence of excommnnication. tSnch a thunder- 
bolt was not to be lightly regarded, and Frederick sailed, the 
next year, for Palestine. But having disdained to solicit 
absolution for what he considered as no crime, the Court of 
Rome was excited to still fiercer indignation against this 
profanation of a crusade by an excommunicated sovereign. 
Upon his arrival in Palestine, he received intelligence that 
the papal troops had broken into the kingdom of Naples. 
No one could rationally have blamed Frederick, if he had 
quitted the Holy Land as he found it ; but he made a treaty 
with the Saracens, which though by no means so disadvan- 
tageous as under all the circumstances might have been 
expected, served as a pretext for new calumnies against him 
in Europe. The charge of irreligion, eagerly and successfully 
propagated, he repelled by persecuting etlicts against heresy 
that do no great honor to his memory, and availed him little 
at the time. Over his Neapolitan dominions he exercised a 
rigorous government, rendered perhaps necessary by the levity 
and insubordination characteristic of the inhabitants, but which 
tended, through the artful representations of Honorius and 
Gregory, to alarm and alienate the Italian republics. 

A new generation had risen up in Lombardy since the 
peace of Constance, and the prerogatives reserved by that 
treaty to the Empire were so seldom called into action, that 
few cities were disposed to recollect their existence. They 
denominated themselves Guelfs or Ghibelins, according to 
habit, and out of their mutual opposition, but without much 
reference to the Em])ire. Those, however, of the former 
party, and especially iMilan, retained their antipathy to tlie 
house of Suabia. Though Frederick II. was entitled, as far 
as established usage can create a right, to the sovereignty 
of Italy, the ]\Iilanese woidd never acknowledge him, nor 
permit Ids coronation at Monza, according to ancient cer- 
emony, with the iron crown of the Lombard kings. The 
pope fomented, to the utmost of his joower, this disaffected 
spirit, and encouraged the Lombard cities to renew their 
former league. This, although conformable to a provision 
in the treaty of Constance, was manifestly hostile to Fred- 
erick, and may be considered as the commencement of a sec- 
ond contest between the republican cities of Lombardy and 
the Empire. But there was a striking difference between 
this and the former confederacy against Frederick Barba^ 



ITAI.Y. ARRANGEMENT OF ITALIAN REPUBLICS. 161 

rossa. In the league of 1167, almost every city, forgetting 
all smaller animosities in the great cause of defending the 
national privileges, contributed its share of exertion to sus- 
tain that perilous conflict ; and this transient hnanimity in a 
people so distracted by internal faction as the Lombards, is 
the surest witness to the justice of their undertaking. Sixty 
years afterwards, their war against the second Frederick had 
less of provocation and less of public spirit. It was, in fact, 
a party struggle of Guelf and Ghibelin cities, to which the 
names of the Church and the Empire gave more of dignity 
and consistence. 

§ 15. The republics of Italy in the thirteenth century were 
so numerous and independent, and their revolutions so fre- 
quent, that it is a difficult matter to avoid confusion, in follow- 
ing their history. It will give more arrangement to our ideas, 
and at the same time illustrate the changes that took i)lace in 
these little states, if we consider them as divided into four 
clusters or constellations, not indeed unconnected one with 
.another, yet each having its own centre of motion and its own 
boundaries. (1.) The first of these we may suppose formed of 
the cities in central Loml)ardy, between the Sessia and the 
Adige, the Alps and the Ligurian mountains; it comprehends 
]\Iilan, Cremona, Pavia, Brescia, Bergamo, I'arma, Biacenza, 
Mantua, Lodi, Alessandria, and several others less distin- 
guished. . These were the original seats of Italian liberty, the 
great movers in the wars of the elder Frederick. Milan was at 
the head of this cluster of cities, and her influence gave an as- 
cendency to the Guelf party ; she had, since the treaty of Con- 
stance, rendered Lodi and Pavia almost her subjects, and was 
in strict union with I>rescia and I^iacenza. Parma, however, 
and Cremona, were unshaken defenders of the em})ire. (2.) In 
the second class we may place the cities of the march of Verona, 
between the Adige and the frontiers of Germany. Of these 
there were but four worth mentioning: Verona, Vicenza, Padua, 
and Treviso. Tlie citizens of all the four were inclined to the 
Guelf interests ; but a powerful body of rural nobility, who 
had never been compelled, like those upon the u])])er Po, to 
quit their fortresses in the hilly country, or reside within the 
walls, attached themselves to the opposite denomination. Some 
of them obtained very great authority in the civil feuds of these 
four republics ; and especially two brothers, Eccelin and Alberic 
da Romano, of a rich and distinguished family, known for its 
devotion to the Empire. By extraordinary vigor and decision 
of character, by dissimulation and breach of oaths, by the in- 



162 SECOND LOMBARD WAR. Chap. III. Part I. 

timidating effects of almost unparalleled cruelty, Eccelin da 
Romano became after some years the absolute master of three 
cities — Padua, Verona, and Vicenza ; and the Guelf party, in 
consequence, was entirely subverted beyond the Adige during 
the continuance of his tyranny. (3.) Another cluster was 
composed of the cities in Romagna : Bologna, Imola, Faenza, 
Ferrara, and several others. Of these Bologna was far the 
most powerful, and, as no city was more steadily for the inter- 
ests of the Church, the Guelfs usually predominated in this 
class ; to which, also, the influence of the house of Este not a 
little contributed. Modena, though not geographically within 
the limits of this division, may be classed along with it from 
her constant wars with Bologna. (4.) A fourth class will 
comprehend the whole of Tuscany, separated almost entirely 
from the politics of Lombardy and Eomagna. Florence headed 
the Guelf cities in this province, Pisa the Ghibelin. The Tus- 
can xmion was formed by Innocent III., and was strongly in- 
clined to the popes ; but gradually the Ghibelin party acquired 
its share of influence ; and the cities of Siena, Arezzo, and 
Lucca shifted their policy, according to external circumstances 
or the fluctuations of their internal factions. The petty cities 
in the region of Spoleto and Ancona hardly, perhaps, deserve 
the name of republics ; and Genoa does not readily fall into 
any of our four classes, unless her wars with Pisa may be 
thought to connect her with Tuscany.^ 

§ IG. After several years of transient hostility and precari- 
ous truce, the Guelf cities of Lombardy engaged in a regular 
and protracted war with Frederick II., or more })roperly with 
their Ghibelin adversaries. Few events of this contest deserve 
particular notice. Neither party ever obtained such decisive 
advantages as had alternately belonged to Frederick Barbarossa 
and the Ijom])ard confederacy during the war of the preceding 
century. A defeat of the Milanese by the emperor, at Corte 
Nuova, in 1237, was balanced by his unsuccessful siege at 
Brescia the next year. The Pisans assisted Fredcn-ick to gain 
a great naval victory over the (ireuoese fleet, in 1241 ; but he 
was obliged to rise from the blockade of Parnaa, which had left 
the standard of Ghibelinism, in 1248. Ultimately, however, 

3 I have taken no notice of Piedmont in this division. Tlie liistory of that country 
seems to be less ehieidated by ancient or niodirn writers than that of other pnrts of 
Italy. It was at this time divided between the counts of .Savoy and nianiuises of 
INIontferrat. But Asti, Cliieri, and I iirin. especially the two former, aiipear to liave 
had a republican form of {government, they were, however, not absolutely indepen- 
dent. The only I'iedmontese city that can properly be consj<lered as a separate state, 
in the thirteenth century, was Vercelli, and even there the bishop seems lo have pos- 
sessed a sort of temporal sovereignty. 



Italy. GREGORY IX. 163 

the strength of the house of Suabia was exhausted by so tedi- 
ous a struggle ; the Ghibelins of Italy had their vicissitudes of 
success ; but their country, and even themselves, lost more and 
more of the ancient connection with Germany. 

In this resistance to Frederick II. the Lombards were much 
indebted to the constant support of Gregory IX. and his suc- 
cessor Innocent IV., and the Guelf or the Church party were 
used as synonymous terms. These pontiffs bore an unquench- 
able hatred to the house of Suabia. No concessions mitigated 
their animosity ; no reconciliation was sincere. Whatever faults 
may be imputed to Frederick, it is impossible for any one, not 
blindly devoted to the Court of Eome, to deny that he was in- 
irpiitously proscribed by her unprincipled ambition. His real 
crime was the inheritance of his ancestors, and tlie name of the 
house of Suabia. In 1239 he was excommunicated by Gregory 
IX. To this he was tolerably accustomed by former experience ; 
but the sentence was attended by an absolution of his subjects 
from their allegiance, and a formal deposition. These sen- 
tences were not very effective upon men of vigorous minds, or 
upon those whose passions were engaged in their cause ; but 
they influenced both those who feared tlie threatenings of the 
clergy and those who wavered already as to their line of 
political conduct. In the fluctuating state of Lombardy the 
excommunication of Frederick undermined his interests even 
in cities like Parma, that had been friendly, and seemed to 
identify the cause of his enemies with thaf of religion — a 
prejudice artfully fomented by means of calumnies propagated 
against himself, and which the conduct of such leading Ghibe- 
lins as Eccelin, who lived in an open defiance of God and man, 
did not contribute to lessen. In 1240, Gregory proceeded to 
pul)lish a crusade against Frederick, as if he had been an open 
enemy to religion ; which he revenged by putting to death all 
the prisoners he made who wore the cross. There was one 
tiling Avanting to make the ex})ulsion of the emperor from tlie 
Christian commonwealth more complete. Gregory IX. accord- 
ingly projected, and Innocent IV. carried into effect, the con- 
vocation of a general council (a.d. 1245). This was held at 
Lyons, an imperial city, bu.t over which Frederick could no 
longer retain his supremacy. In this assembly, where one 
hundred and forty prelates appeared, the question whether 
Frederick ought to be deposed was solemnly discussed ; he sub- 
mitted to defend himself by his advocates : and the pope, in 
the presence, though without formally collecting the suffrages 
of the council, pronounced a sentence, by which Frederick's 



164 COUNCIL OF LYONS. Chap. IIL Part I. 

excommunication was renewed, the empire and all liis king- 
doms taken away, and his subjects absolved from their fidelity. 
Tills is the most pompous act of usurpation in all the records 
of the Church of Rome ; and the tacit approbation of a gen- 
eral council seemed to incorporate the pretended right of de- 
posing kings, which might have passed as a mad vaunt of 
Gregory VII. and his successors, with the established faith of 
Christendom. 

§ 17. Upon the death of Frederick II. in 1250, he left to 
his son Conx"ad a contest to maintain for every part of his in- 
heritance, as well as for the imperial crown. But the vigor of 
the house of Suabia was gone ; Conrad was reduced to fight for 
the kingdom of Naples, the only succession which he could 
hope to secure against the troops of Innocent IV., who still 
pursued his family with implacable hatred, and claimed that 
kingdom as forfeited to its feudal superior, the Holy See. 
After Conrad's premature death, which happened in 1254, the 
throne was tilled by his illegitimate brother, Manfred, who re- 
tained it by his bravery and address, in desjjite of the popes, 
till they were compelled to call in the assistance of a more 
powerful arm. 

The death of Conrad brings to a termination that period in 
Italian history which we have described as nearly co-extensive 
with the greatness of the house of Suabia. It is perhaps, 
upon the whole, the most honorable to Italy — that in which 
she displayed the most of national energy and jiatriotism. A 
Florentine or Venetian may dwell with pleasure upon later 
times, but a Lombard will cast back liis eye across the desert 
of centuries, till it reposes on the field of Legnano. 

§ 18. The successful resistance of the Lombard cities to 
such princes as both the Fredericks must astonish a reader wiio 
brings to t!ie story of these Middle Ages notions derived from 
modern times. But when we consider not only the ineffectual 
control which could be exerted over a feudal army, bound only 
to a short term of service, and reluctantly kei)t in the field at 
its own cost, but the peculiar distrust and disaffection with 
which many German princes regarded the house of Suabia, h>ss 
reason will appear for surprise. Nor did the kingdom of Na- 
])les, almost always in agitation, yield any material aid to tlie 
second Frederick. The main caiise, however, of that triumph 
wliich attended Londiardy was the intrinsic energy of a free 
government. From the eleventh century, when the cities be- 
came virtually repul)lican, they put out those vigorous shoots 
which are the growth of freedom alone. Their domestic feuds, 



Italy. LOMBARD CITIES. 165 

their mutual wars, their fierce assaults of their national 
enemies, checked not their strength, their wealth, or their 
population ; hut ratliev, as the limbs are nerved by labor and 
hardship, the repul)lics of Italy grew in vigor and courage 
through the conflicts they sustained. 

We have few authentic testimonies as to the domestic im- 
provement of the free Italian cities, while they still deserve 
the name. But we may perceive by history that their power 
and population, according to their extent of territory, were 
almost incredible. In Galvaneus Flamma, a Milanese writer, 
we find a curious statistical account of that city in 1288, which, 
though of a date about thirty years after its liberties had been 
overthrown by usurpation, must be considered as implying a 
high degree of previous advancement, even if we make allow- 
ance, as probably we should, for some exaggeration. The in- 
habitants are reckoned at 200,()()0 ; the private houses 13,000; 
the nobility alone dwelt in sixty streets ; 8000 gentlemen or 
heavy cavalry (milites) might be mustered from the city and 
its district, and 210,000 men capable of arms — a force suf- 
ficient, the writer observes, to crush all the Saracens. There 
were in Milan six hundred notaries, two hundred physicians, 
eighty school-masters, and fifty transcribers of manuscripts. 
In the district were one hundred and fifty castles with adjoin- 
ing villages. At this period the territory of Milan was not, 
perhaps, more extensive than the county of Surrey ; it was 
bounded at a little distance, on almost every side, by Lodi, 
or Pavia, or Bergamo, or Como. It is possible, however, that 
Flamma may have meant to include some of these as depend- 
encies of Milan, though not strictly united with it. How flour- 
ishing must the state of cultivation have been in such a country, 
which not only drew no supplies from any foreign land, but 
exported ])art of her own produce ! It was in the best age of 
their liberties, immediately after the liattle of Legnano, that 
the Milanese commenced the great canal which conducts the 
waters of the Tesino to their capital, a work very extraordinary 
for that time. During the same period the cities gave proofs 
of internal prosperity that in many instances have descended 
to our own observation, in the solidity and magnificence of 
their architecture. Ecclesiastical structures were perhaps 
more splendid in France and England ; but neither country 
could pretend to match the palaces and pul)lic buildings, the 
streets flagged with stone, the bridges of the same material, 
or the commodious ]n'ivate houses of Italy. 

The couraije of these cities was wrought sometimes to a tone 



166 LOMBAED CITIES. Chap. III. Pakt I. 

of insolent defiance through the security inspired by their 
means of defence. From tlie time of the Romans to that when 
the use of gunpowder came to prevail, little change was made, 
or perhaps could be made, in that part of military science 
which relates to the attack and defence of fortified places. 
We find precisely the same engines of offence ; the cumbrous 
towers, from which arrows were shot at the besieged, the 
machines from which stones were discharged, the battering- 
rams which assailed the walls, and the basket-work covering 
(the vinea or testudo of the ancients, and the gattus or chat- 
chateil of the Middle Ages) under which those who pushed the 
battering-engines were protected from the enemy. On the 
other hand, a city was fortified with a strong wall of brick or 
marble, with towers raised upon it at intervals, and a deep 
moat in front. Sometimes the antemural or barbacan was 
added — a rampart of less height, which impeded the approach 
of the hostile engines. The gates were guarded with a port- 
cullis ; an invention which, as well as the barbacan, was bor- 
rowed from the Saracens. With such advantages for defence, 
a numerous and intrepid body of burghers might not unreason- 
ably stand at bay against a powerful army ; and as the conse- 
quences of capture were most terrible, while resistance was 
seldom hopeless, we cannot wonder at the desperate bravery of 
so many besieged towns. Indeed it seldom happened that one 
of considerable size was taken, except by famine or treachery. 

§ 19. Of the government which existed in the republics of 
Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries no definite 
sketch can be traced. The magistrates elected in almost all 
of them, when they first began to shake off the jurisdiction 
of their count or bishop, were styled Consuls — a word very 
expressive to an Italian ear, since, in the darkest ages, tradi- 
tion must have preserved some acquaintance with the re])ul)li- 
can government of Rome. The consuls were ahvays annual ; 
and tlicir office comprehended the command of tlio national 
militia, in war, as well as the administration of justice and 
])reservation of public order ; but their number was vaiious — 
two, four, six, or even twelve. In their legislative and delib- 
erative councils the Lombards still copied the Roman constitu- 
tion, or i)erliaps fell naturally into the- form most calculated to 
unite sound discretion with the exercise of popular sovereignty. 
A council of trust and secrecy (della credenza) was composed 
of a small number of persons, who took the management of 
public affairs, and may be called the ministers of the state. 
l>ut the decision upon matters of general importance, treaties 



Italy. LOMBARD CITIES. 167 

of alliance or declarations of war, the choice of consuls or am- 
bassadors, belonged to the general council. This appears not 
to have been unilbrmly constituted in every city; and accord- 
ing to its composition the government was more or less demo- 
cratical. An ultimate sovereignty, however, was reserved to the 
mass of the peo[)l(; ; and a Parliament or general assembly was 
held to deliberate on any change in the form of constitution. 

About the end of the twelfth century a new and singular 
species of magistracy was introduced into the Lombard cities. 
During the tyranny of Frederick I. he had appointed officers 
of his own, called Fodestus, instead of the elective consuls. It 
is remarkable that this memorial of despotic power should not 
have excited insuperable alarm and disgust in the free repub- 
lics. But, on the contrary, they almost universally, after the 
peace of Constance, revived an office which had been abrogated 
when they first rose in rebellion against Frederick. From 
experience, as we must presume, of the partiality which their 
domestic factions carried into the administration of justice, 
it became a general practice to elect, by the name of podesta, 
a citizen of some neighboring state as their general, their crim- 
inal judge, and preserver of the peace. The last duty was 
frequently arduous, and required a vigorous as well as an up- 
right magistrate. Offences against the laws and security of 
the commonwealth were during the Middle Ages as often, per- 
haps more often, committed by the rich and powerful than by 
the inferior class of society. The sentence of a magistrate 
against a powerful offender was not pronounced without dan- 
ger of tumult ; it was seldom executed without force. A con- 
victed criminal was not, as at present, the stricken deer of 
society, whose disgrace his kindred shrink from participating, 
and whose memory they strive to forget. The law was to be 
enforced not against an individual, but a family — not against 
a family, but a faction — not perhaps against a local faction, 
but the whole Guelf or Ghibelin name, which might become 
interested in the quarrel. The podesta was to arm the repub- 
lic against her refractory citizen ; his house was to l)e besieged 
and razed to the ground, his defenders to be quelled by vio- 
lence : and thus the people, become familiar with outrage and 
homicide under the command of tlieir magistrates, were more 
disposed to repeat such scenes at the instigation of their 
passions. 

The podesta was sometimes chosen in a general assembly, 
sometimes by a select number of citizens. His office was 
annual, though prolonged in peculiar emergencies. He was 



168 LOMBARD CITIES. Chap. 111. Pakt I. 

invariably a man of noble family, even in those cities which 
excluded their own nobility from any share in the government. 
He received a fixed salary, and was compelled to remain in 
the city after the expiration of his office for the purpose of 
answering such charges as might be adduced against his con- 
duct. He could neither marry a native of the city, nor have 
any relation resident within the district, nor even, so great 
was their jealousy, eat or drink in the house of any citizen. 
The authority of these foreign magistrates was not by any 
means alike in all cities. In some he seems to have superseded 
the consuls, and commanded tlie armies in war. In others, as 
Milan and Florence, his authority was merely judicial. We 
find in some of the old annals the years headed by the names of 
the podestas, as by those of the consuls in the history of Home. 

§ 20. The effects of the evil spirit of discord that had so 
fatally breathed upon the repid)lics of Lombardy were by no 
means confined to national interests, or to the grand distinction 
of Guelf and Ghibelin. Dissensions glowed in the heart of 
every city, and as the danger of foreign war became distant, 
these grew move fierce and unappeasable. The feudal system 
had been established upon the principle of territorial aristoc- 
racy ; it maintained the authority, it encouraged the pride of 
rank. Hence, when the rural nobility were compelled to take 
up their residence in cities, they preserved the ascendency of 
birth and riches. From the natural respect which is shown to 
these advantages, all offices of trust and command were shared 
among tliem ; it is not material whether this were by positive 
right or continual usage. A limited aristocracy of this descrip- 
tion, where the inferior citizens possess the right of selecting 
their magistrates by free suffrage from a numerous body of 
nobles, is not among the worst forms of government, and 
affords no contiunptible security against op|n'ession and anar- 
chy. This regimen appears to have prevailed in most of the 
Lombard cities during the eleventh and twelfth centuries ; but 
gradually dissensions arose between the nobility and the ple- 
beian burgesses, which at length broke out into civil war in 
most of the Italian cities. About the year 1220 the ques- 
tion of aristocratical or popular command was tried by arms 
in Milan, Piacenza, Modena, Cremona, and Bologna. 

There is a natural preponderance in the popular scale, which, 
in a fair trial, invariably gaiias on that of tlie less numerous 
class. The artisans, who composed the bulk of the population, 
were arranged in companies, according t<o their occupations. 
Sometimes, as at Milan, they formed separate associations, 



Italy LOMBAKD CITIES. 1G9 

with rules for their internal government. The clubs, called at 
Milan la Motta antl la Credenza, obtained a degree of weight 
not at all surprising to those who consider the spirit of mutual 
attachment which belongs to such fraternities; and we shall 
see a more striking instance of this hereafter in the republic of 
Florence. To so formidable and organized a democracy the 
nobles opposed their numerous families, the generous spirit 
that belongs to high birth, the influence of wealth and estab- 
lished name. The members of each distinguished family 
a})pear to have livetl in the same street; their houses were 
fortitied with square massive towers of cominanding height, 
and wore the semblance of castles within the walls of a city. 
Brancaleon, the famous senator of Rome, destroyed one hun- 
dred and forty of these domestic intrencliments, which were 
constantly serving the pur[)Ose of civil broils and outrage. 
Expelled, as frequently happened, from the city, it was in the 
power of the nobles to avail themselves of their su])eriority in 
the use of cavalry, and to lay waste the district, till weariness 
of an unprofitable contention reduced the citizens to terms of 
compromise. But when all these resources were ineffectual, 
they were tempted or forced to sacrifice the public liberty to 
their own welfare, and lent their aid to a foreign master or a 
domestic usurper. 

In all these scenes of turbulence, whether the contest was 
between the nobles and people, or the Guelf and Ghibelin fac- 
tions, no mercy was shown by the conquerors. The vanquished 
lost their homes and fortunes, and, retiring to other cities of 
their own party, waited for the opportunity of revenge. In a 
popular tumult the houses of the beaten side were frequently 
levelled to the ground — not perhaps from a senseless fury, 
A\'hich Muratori inveighs against, but on account of the injury 
which these fortified houses inflicted upon the lower citizens. 
The most deadly hatred is that which men exasperated by pro- 
scription and forfeiture bear to their country ; nor have we 
need to ask any other cause for the calamities of Italy than 
the bitterness with which an unsuccessful faction was thus 
pursued into banishment. When the Ghibelins were returning 
to Florence, after a defeat given to the prevailing party in 
1260, it was proposed among them to demolish the city itself 
which had cast them out ; and, but for the persuasion of one 
man, Farinata degl' Uberti,'* their revenge would have thus ex- 

* I cannot forgive Dante for placing tliis patriot tra I'anime piii nere, in one of the 
worse regions of his Inferno. The conversation of the poet with Farinata, cant. 10, is 
very line, and illustrative of Florentine history. 



170 LOMBARD CITIES. Chap. 111. Pakt L 

tinguisliecl all patriotism. It is to this that we must ascribe 
their proneness to call in assistance from every side, and to 
invite any servitude for the sake of retaliating upon their 
adversaries. 

Independently of the two leading differences which em- 
battled the citizens of an Italian state, their form of govern- 
ment and their relation to the empire, there were others more 
contemptible though not less mischievous. In every city the 
quarrels of private families became the foundation of general 
schism, sedition, and proscription. Sometimes these blended 
themselves with the grand distinctions of Guelf and Ghibelin ; 
sometimes they wore more nakedly cons})icuous. Thus an 
oiitrage committed at Pistoja in 1300 S}dit the inhabitants into 
the parties of Bianchi and Neri ; and these, spreading to Flor- 
ence, created one of the most virulent divisions wliich annoyed 
that republic. In one of the changes -which attended this little 
raiiiitication of faction, Florence expelled a young citizen mIio 
had borne offices of magistracy, and espoused the cause of the 
IJianchi. Dante Alighieri retired to the courts of some Ghibe- 
lin princes, where his sublime and inventive mind, in the gloom 
of exile, completed that original combination of vast and ex- 
travagant conceptions with keen political satire, which has 
given immortality to his name, and even lustre to the petty 
contests of his time. 

In the earlier stages of the Lombard republics their differ- 
ences, as well mutual as domestic, had been frequently appeased 
by the mediation of the emperors ; and the loss of this salutary 
influence may be considered as no slight evil attached to that 
absolute emancipation which Italy attained in the thirteenth 
century. The po])es sometimes endeavored to interpose an 
authority which, though not quite so direct, was held in greater 
veneration ; and if their own tempers had been always pure 
from the selfish and vindictive passions of those whom they 
influenced, might have produced more general and permanent 
good. But they considered the Ghibelins as their own ])eculiar 
enemies, and the triumph of the opposite faction as the Church's 
best security. Gregory X. and Nicholas III., Avhether from 
benevolent motives, or because their jealousy of Charles of 
Anjou, while at the head of the Guelfs, suggested the revival 
of a Ghibelin party as a counterpoise to his power, distinguished 
their pontificate by enforcing measures of reconciliation in all 
Italian cities ; but their successors returned to the ancient 
policy and prejudices of Home. 



Italy. 



STATE OF ITALY. 171 



PART II. 

§ 1. state of Italy after the Extinction of tlie House of Suabia. § 2 Conquest of 
Nai)ies by Charles of Anjou. § 3. 'I'he I^onibuid liepublics become severally sub- 
ject to Trinces or Usurpers. §4. The Visconti of Milan. Their Aggrandizeuieut. 
5. Decline of the Imperial Authority over Italy. § C. Internal State of liome. 
§ 7. Hieiizi. § 8. Florence. § D. Iler forms of Government. Constitution of 
IJliO. § 10. Struggles between the nobility and the I'eople. The Ordinances of 
Justice. § 11. Despotism of the Duke of Athens. §12. Rule of the Cuelf Society. 
§ 13. Revolutions in Florence. § 14. Territory of Florence. § 15. Comjuest of 
I'isa. Pisa : its Commerce, Naval Wars with Genoa, and Decay. § Hi. Genoa. 
Her Contentions with Venice. War of Chioggio. § 17. Government of Genoa. 
§ 18. Venice. Her Origin and Prosperity. § 19. Venetian Government. Its Vices. 
§ 20. Territorial Conquests of Venice. § 21. Military System of Italy. § 22. Com- 
pauies of Adventure. 1. Foreign : Guarnieri, Havvkwood ; and 2. Native ; Braccio, 
Sforza. § 2.3. Improvements in Military Service. Arms, offensive and defensive. 
Invention of Gunpowder. § 24. Naples. Sicilian Vespers. First Line of Anjou. 
§ 25. Charles II. Robert. .loanua I. § 26. Ladislaus. § 27. Joanna II. § 28. 
Alfonso, king of Naples. § 2<J. -State of Italy during the Fifteenth Century. §30. 
Florence. Rise of the Medici, and Uiiin of their Adversaries. § 31. Lorenzo de 
Medici. §32. Pretensions of Charles VUI. to Naples. 

§ 1. From the death of Frederick II. in 1250, to tlie invasion 
of Charles VIII. in 1494, a long and undistinguished period 
occurs, which it is impossible to break into any natural divis- 
ions. It is an age in many respects highly brilliant — the age 
of poetry and letters, of art, and of continual improvement. 
Italy displayed an intellectual superiority in this period over 
the Transalpine nations which certainly had not appeared 
since the destruction of the Roman Empire. But her political 
history presents a labyrinth of petty facts so obscure and of so 
little influence as not to arrest tlie attention, so intricate and 
incapable of classification as to leave only confusion in the 
memory. The general events that are worthy of notice, and 
give a character to this long period, are the establishment of 
small tyrannies upon the ruins of republican government in 
most of the cities, the gradual rise of three considerable states, 
Milan, Florence, and Venice, the naval and commercial rivalry 
between the last city and Genoa, the final acquisition by the 
popes of their present territorial sovereignty, and the rt'voln- 
tions in the kingdom of Naples under the lines of Anjou and 
A r agon. 

After the death of Frederick II. the distinctions of Guelf 
and Ghibelin became destitute of all rational meaning. The 
most odious crimes were constantly perpetrated, and the ut- 



172 DECLINE OF THE GHIBELINS. Cuap. III. Part II. 

most miseries endured, for an echo and a shade that mocked 
the deluded enthusiasts of faction. None of the Guelfs de- 
nied the nominal but indefinite sovereignty of the empire ; 
and beyond a name the Ghibelius themselves would have 
been little disposed to carry it. But the virulent hatreds 
attached to these words grew continually more implacable, till 
ages of ignominy and tyrannical government had extinguished 
every energetic passion in the bosoms of a degraded people. 

§ 2. In the fall of the house of Suabia, Rome ap])eared to 
liave consummated her triumph. She gained a still further 
ascendency by the change of dynasty in Naples. This kingdom 
had been occupied, after the death of Conrad, by his illegiti- 
mate brother, Manfred, in the behalf, as he at first pretended, 
of young Conradin the heir, but in fact as his own acquisition. 
He was a prince of an active and firm mind, well fitted for his 
difiicult post, to whom the Ghibelins looked up as tlieir head, 
and as tlie representative of his father. It was a natural 
object with the popes, independently of their ill-will towards a 
son of Frederick II., to see a sovereign upon whom they could 
better rely ])laced upon so neighboring a throne. Charles, 
count of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, was tempted by them to 
lead a crusade , (for as such all wars for the interest of Rome 
were now considered) against the Neapolitan usurper (a.d. 
1265). The chance of a battle decided the fate of Naples, and 
had a striking influence upon the history of Europe for several 
centuries. Manfred was killed in the field ; but there remained 
the legitimate heir of the Fredericks, a boy of seventeen years 
old, Conradin, son of Conrad, who rashly, as we say at least 
after the event, attempted to regain his inheritance. He fell 
into the hands of Charles, and the voice of those rude ages, as 
well as of a more enlightened posterity, has united in branding 
with everlasting infamy the name of that prince, who did not 
hesitate to purchase the security of his own title by the public 
execution of an honorable comi)etitor, or rather a rightful 
claimant of the throne he had usurped (a.d. 1268). With Con- 
radin the house of Suabia was extinguished ; but Constance, 
the daughter of Manfred, had transported his right to Sicily 
and Naples into the house of Aragon, by her marriage with 
Peter III. 

This success of a monarch selected by the Roman pontiffs 
as their particular champion turned tlie tide of faction over all 
Italy. He expelled the Ghibelins from Florence, of which 
they had a few years before obtained a complete command by 
means of their memorable victory upon the River Arbia. After 



Italy. SUBJECTION OF LOMBARD CITIES. 17o 

the fall of Conradin that party was everywhere discouraged. 
Germany held out small hopes of support, even when the 
imperial throne, which had long been vacant, should be filled 
by one of her princes. The populace were in almost every 
city attached to the Church and to the name of Guelf ; the 
kings of Naples employed their arms, and the popes their 
excommunications; so that for the remainder of the thirteenth 
century tlie name of Ghibelin was a term of proscription in the 
majority of Lombard and Tuscan republics. Charles was con- 
stituted by the pope vicar-general in Tuscany. This was a 
new pretension of the Roman pontiffs, to name the lieutenants 
of the Em[)ire during its vacancy, which indeed could not be 
completely filled up without their consent. It soon, however, 
became evident that he aimed at the sovereignty of Italy. 
Some of the popes themselves, Gregory X. and Nicholas IV., 
grew jealous of their own creature. 

§ 3. Almost all the Lombard republics had, by force, or 
stratagem, or free consent, already fallen under the yoke of 
some leading citizens, who became the lord (signore) or, in the 
German sense, tyrant of his country. The first instance of a 
voluntary delegation of sovereignty was that of Ferrara, which 
placed itself under the lord of Este. Eccelin made himself 
truly the tyrant of the cities beyond the Adige ; and such 
experience ought naturally to have inspired the Italians with 
more universal abhorrence of despotism. But every danger 
appeared trivial in the eyes of exasperated factions when com- 
pared with the ascendency of their adversaries. Weary of 
unceasing and useless contests, in which ruin fell with an 
alternate but equal hand upon either party, liberty withdrew 
from a people who disgraced her name ; and the tumultuous, 
the brave, the intractable Lombards, became eager to submit 
themselves to a master, and patient under the heaviest oppres- 
sion. Or, if tyranny sometimes overstepped the limits of for- 
bearance, and a seditious rising expelled the reigning prince, 
it was only to produce a change of hands, and transfer the 
impotent people to a different, and perhaps a worse despotism. 
In many cities not a conspiracy was planned, not a sigh was 
breathed, in favor of republican government, after once they 
had passed under the SAvay of a single person. The progress, 
indeed, was gradual, though sure, from limited to absolute, 
from tem])orary to hereditary ])Ower, from a just and conciliat- 
ing rule to extortion and cruelty. But before the middle of 
the fourteenth century at tlie latest, all those cities which had 
spurned at the faintest mark of submission to the emperors 



174 THE VISCONTI. Chap. III. Takt II. 

lost even the recollection of self-government, and were be- 
queathed, like an undoubted patrimony, among the children of 
their new lords. Such is the j)rogress of usurpation, and such 
the vengeance that Heaven reserves for those who waste in 
license and faction its first of social blessings, liberty. 

§ 4. The city most distinguished, in both wars against the 
house of 8uabia, for an vmconquerable attachment to republi- 
can institutions, was the first to sacrifice them in a few years 
after the death of Frederick II. Milan had for a considerable 
time been agitated by civil dissensions between the nobility 
and inferior citizens. These parties Avere pretty equally bal- 
anced, and their success was consequently alternate. Each 
had its own podesta, as a party leader, distinct from the legiti- 
mate magistrate of the city. In consequence of the crime of a 
nobleman, who had murdered one of his creditors, the two 
])arties took up arms in 1257. A civil war, of various success, 
and interrupted by several pacifications, which in that unhappy 
temper could not be durable, was terminated in about two 
years by the entire discomfiture of the aristocracy, and by 
the election of Martin della Torre as chief and lord (capitano e 
signore) of the people. Though the Milanese did not, pro- 
bably, intend to renounce the sovereignty resident in their gen- 
eral assemblies, yet they soon lost tlie republican spirit: five 
in succession of the family della Torre might be said to reign 
in Milan ; each indeed by a formal election, but with an 
implied recognition of a sort of hereditary title. Twenty 
years afterwards the Visconti, a famil}^ of opposite interests, 
supplanted the Torriani at jNIilan; and the rivalry between 
tliese great houses was not at an end till the final establish- 
ment of Mattco Visconti in 1313 ; but the people were not 
otherwise considered than as aiding by force the one or other 
])arty, and at most deciding between the pretensions of their 
masters. 

The vigor and concert infused into the Guelf party by the 
successes of Charles of Anjou was not very durable. That 
prince was soon involved in a protracted and unfortunate quar- 
rel with the kings of Aragon, to whose protection his revolted 
subjects in Italy had recurred. On the other hand, several men 
of energetic character retrieved tlie Ghibelin interests in Lom- 
bardy, and even in the Tuscan cities. The Visconti were acknowl- 
edged heads of that faction. A family early established as 
lords of Verona, the della Scala, maintained the credit of the 
same denomination between the Adige and thc^ Adriatic. The 
inferior tyrants were partly Guelf, partly Ghibelin, according 



Italy. REVIVAL OP THE GHIBELINS. 175 

to local revolutions ; but, upon the whole, the hitter acquired 
a gradual ascendency. Those, indeed, who cared for the inde- 
pendence of Italy, or for their own power, had far less to fear 
from the phantom of imperial prerogatives, long intermitted 
and incapable of being enforced, than from the new race of 
foreign princes whom the Church had substituted for the house 
of Suabia. The Angevin kings of Naples were sovereigns of 
Provence, and from thence easily encroached upon Piedmont, 
and threatened the Milanese. Robert, the third of this line, 
almost openly asynred, like his grandfather Charles I., to a real 
sovereignty over Italy. His offers of assistance to Guelf cities 
in war were always coupled with a demand of the sovereignty. 
Many yielded to his ambition ; and even Florence twice be- 
stowed Tipon him a temporary dictatorshi]). In 1314 he was 
acknowledged lord of Lucca, Florence, Pavia, Alessandria, 
Bergamo, and the cities of Pomagna. In 1318 the Guelfs of 
Genoa found no other resource against the Ghibelin emigrants 
who were under their walls than to resign their liberties to the 
King of Kaples for the term of ten years, which he procured 
to be renewed for six more. The Avignon popes, especially 
John XXII. , out of blind hatred to the Emperor Louis of 
Pavaria and the Visconti family, abetted all these measures of 
ambition. But they were rendered abortive by Robert's death, 
and the subsequent disturbances of his kingdom. 

At the latter end of the thirteenth century there were al- 
most as many princes in the north of Italy as there had been 
free cities in the preceding age. Their equality, and the fre- 
quent domestic revolutions which made their seat unsteady, 
ke])t them for a while from encroaching on each other. Grad- 
ually, however, they became less numerous : a quantity of 
obscure tyrants were swept away from the smaller cities ; and 
the people, careless or hopeless of liberty, wore glad to change 
the rule of despicable petty usurpers for that of more distin- 
guished and jiowerful families. About the year 1350 the cen- 
tral parts of Lombardy had fallen under the dominion of the 
Visconti. Four other houses occupied the second rank ; that 
of Este at Ferrara and Modena ; of Scala at Verona, of Car- 
rara at Padua, which later than any Lombard city had resigned 
her liberty ; and of Gonzaga at Mantua, which, without ever 
obtaining any material extension of territory, continued, prob- 
ably for that reason, to reign undisturbed till the eighteenth 
century. But these united were hardly a match, as they 
sometimes experienced, for the Visconti. That family, the 
object of every league formed in Italy for more than fifty 



17G POWER OF THE VISCONTI. Chap. III. Part II. 

years, in constant hostility to the Ciiurch, and well inured to 
interdicts and excommunications, })roducing no one man of 
military talents, but fertile of tyrants detested for their ]ier- 
fidiousness and cruelty, were nevertheless enabled, with almost 
uninterrupted success, to add city after city to the dominion of 
jMilan, till it absorbed all the north of Italy. Under Gian Ga- 
leazzo, whose reign began in 1385, the viper (their armorial 
bearing) assumed indeed a menacing attitude;^ he overturned 
the great family of Scala, and annexed their extensive posses- 
sions to his own ; no power intervened from Vercelli, in Pied- 
mont, to Feltre and Belluno ; while the free cities of Tuscany, 
Pisa, Siena, Perugia, and even Bologna, as if by a kind of 
Avitchcraft, voluntaril}^ called in a dissembling tyrant as their 
master. At length the Visconti were tacitly adinitted among 
the reigning princes, by the erection of Milan into a duchy 
under letters patent of the Emperor Wenceslaus (a.d. 1295). 

§ 5. The imperial authority over Italy was almost entirely 
suspended after the death of Frederick II. A long inter- 
regnum followed in Germany ; and when the vacancy was 
sujiplied by Eodolph of Hapsburg (a.d. 1272), he was too 
prudent to dissipate his moderate resources where the great 
house of Suabia had failed. About forty years afterwards 
the emperor, Henry VII., of Luxemburg (a.d. 1308), a prince, 
like Eodolpli, of small hereditary possessions, but active and 
discreet, availed himself of the ancient res])ect borne to the 
imperial name, and the mutual jealousies of the Italians, to 
recover for a very short time a remarkable influence. P)Ut, 
though professing neutrality and desire of union between the 
Guelfs and Ghibelins, he could not succeed in removing the 
disgust of the former ; his exigencies impelled him to large 
demands of money; and the Italians, when they counted his 
scanty German cavalry, perceived that oliedience was alto- 
gether a matter of their own choice. Henry died, however, 
in time to save himself from any decisive reverse. His suc- 
cessors, Louis of Bavaria and Charles IV., descended from 
the Alps with similar motives, but after some temporary 
good-fortune were obliged to return, not without discredit. 
Yet the Italians never broke that almost invisible thread 
which connected them with Germany; the fallacious name 
of Roman emperor still challenged their allegiance, though 
conferred by seven Teutonic electors Avithout their conciu'- 

1 Allusions to herahlrv are very common in tlie Italian writors. All the historians 
of the fourteenth century habitually use the viper, il biscioue, as a synonym for the 
j)0wer of Jlilan. 



Italy. RELATIONS WITH THE EMPIRE. 177 

rence. Even Floi'eiu3e, tlie most independent and liigli-spirited 
of republics, was induced to make a treaty with Charles IV. in 
1355, which, while it confirmed all her actual liberties, not a 
little, by that very confirmation, affected her sovereignty. This 
deference to the supposed prerogatives of the Empire, even 
while they were least formidable, was partly owing to jealousy 
of French or Neapolitan interference, partly to the national 
hatred of the popes who had seceded to Avignon, and in some 
degree to a misplaced respect for antiquity, to which the revival 
of letters had given birth. The great civilians, and the much 
greater poets, of the fourteenth century, taught Italy to con- 
sider her emperor as a dormant sovereign, to whom her various 
principalities and republics were subordinate, and during whose 
absence alone they had legitimate authority. 

In one part, however, of that country, the Empire had, 
soon after the commencement of this period, spontaneously 
renounced its sovereignty. From the era of Pepin's dona- 
tion, confirmed and extended by many subsequent charters, 
the Holy See had tolerably just pretensions to the province 
entitled Eomagna, or the exarchate of Ravenna. But the 
popes, whose menaces were dreaded at the extremities of 
Europe, were still very weak as temporal princes. Even In- 
nocent III. had never been able to obtain possession of this 
part of St, Peter's patrimony. The circumstances of Kodolph's 
accession inspired Nicholas III. with more confidence. That 
emperor granted a confirmation of everything included in the 
donations of Louis I., Otho, and his other predecessors, but 
was still reluctant or ashamed to renounce his imperial rights. 
Accordingly, his charter is expressed to be granted without 
diminution of the Empire (sine demembratione imperii) ; and 
his chancelhn- received an oath of fidelity from the cities of 
Romagna. But the pope insisting firmly on his own claim, 
Ivodolph discreetly avoided involving himself in a fatal quarrel, 
and, in 1278, absolutely released the imperial supremacy over ' 
all the dominions already granted to the Holy See. 

§ 6. This is a leading epoch in the temporal monarchy of 
Rome. But she stood only in the place of the emperor ; and 
her ultimate sovereignty was compatible with the practicable 
independence of the free cities, or of the usurpers who had 
risen up among them. Bologna, Faenza, Rimini, and Ravenna, 
with many others less considerable, took an oath, indeed, to 
the pope, but continued to regulate both their internal concerns 
and foreign relations at their own discretion. The first of 
these cities was far pre-eminent above the rest for population 



178 INTERNAL STATE OF HOME. Chap. III. Part II. 

and renown, and, though not without several intermissions, 
preserved a republican character to the end of the fourteenth 
century. The rest were soon enslaved by petty tyrants, more 
obscure than those of Lombardy. It , was not easy for the 
pontiffs of Avignon to reinstate themselves in a dominion 
which they seemed to have abandoned ; but they made several 
attempts to recover it, sometimes with spiritual arms, some- 
times with the more efficacious aid of mercenary troops. The 
annals of this part of Italy are peculiarly uninteresting. 

Rome itself was, throughout the Middle Ages, very little 
disposed to acquiesce in the government of her bishop. His 
rights Avere indefinite, and unconfirmed by positive law ; the 
emperor was long sovereign ; the people always meant to be 
free. Besides the common causes of insubordination and an- 
archy among the Italians, which applied equally to the capi- 
tal city, other sentiments more peculiar to Rome preserved 
a continual though not uniform influence for many centuries. 
There still remained enough in the wreck of that vast inher- 
itance to swell the bosoms of her citizens with a conscious- 
ness of their own dignity. They bore the venerable name, 
they contemplated the monuments of art and empire, and 
forgot, in the illusions of national pride, that the tutelar gods 
of the building were departed forever. About the middle 
of the twelfth century these recollections were heightened 
by the eloquence of Arnold of Brescia, a political heretic 
who preached against the temporal jurisdiction of the hie- 
rarcliy. In a temporary intoxication of fancy they were led 
to make a ridiculous show of self-importance towards Freder- 
ick Barbarossa, when he came to receive the imperial crown ; 
but the German sternly chided their ostentation, and chas- 
tised their resistance. With the popes they coidd deal 
more securely. Several of them were expelled from Rome 
during that age by the seditious citizens. Lucius II. died of 
"hurts received in a tumult. The government was vested in 
fifty -six Senators, annually chosen by tlie people through the 
intervention of an electoral body, ten delegates from each of 
the thirteen districts of the city. This constitution lasted not 
quite fifty years. In 1192 Rome imitated the prevailing fash- 
ion by the appointment of an annual foreign magistrate. Ex- 
cept in name, the Senator of Rome appears to have perfectly 
resembled the podesta of other cities. This magistrate super- 
seded the representative Senate, who had proved by no means 
ade(piate to control the most lawless aristocracy of Italy. I 
shall not repeat the story of Brancaleon's rigorous and inflexi- 



Italy, RIENZI. . 179 

ble justice, which a great historian has already drawn from 
obscurity. It illustrates not the annals of Rome alone, but 
the general state of Italian society, the nature of a podesta's 
duty, and the difficulties of its execution. In the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries the Senate, and the Senator who succeeded 
them, exercised one distinguishing attribute of sovereignty, 
that of coining gold and silver money. Some of their coins 
still exist, with legends iu a very republican tone. Doubtless 
the temporal authority of the jiopes varied according to their 
personal character. Innocent III. had much more than his 
predecessors for almost a century, or than some of his succes- 
sors. He made the Senator take an oath of fealty to him, whicli, 
though not very comprehensive, must have passed in those 
times as a recognition of his superiority. 

§ 7, Though there was much less obedience to any legiti- 
mate power at Rome than anywhere else in Italy, even during 
the thirteenth century, yet, after the secession of the popes 
to Avignon, their own city was left in a far worse condition 
than before. Disorders of every kind, tumult and robbery, 
prevailed in the streets. The Roman nobility were engaged in 
perpetual war with each other. ISTot content with their own 
fortified palaces, they turned the sacred monuments of antiq- 
uity into strongholds, and consummated the destruction of 
time and conrpiest. At no period has the city endured such 
irreparable injuries ; nor was the downfall of the Western Em- 
pire so fatal to its capital as the contemptible feuds of the 
Orsini and Colonna families. Whatever there was of govern- 
ment, whether administered by a legate from Avignon or by 
the municipal autlioiities, had lost all hold on these powerful 
barons. In the midst of this degradation and wretchedness, 
an obscure man, Nicola di Rienzi, conceived the project of re- 
storing Rome, not only to good order, but even to her ancient 
greatness (a.d. 1347). He had received an education beyond 
his birth, and nourished his mind with the study of tlie best 
writers. After many harangues to the peo])le, which the no- 
bility, blinded by their self-confidence, did not attempt to 
repress, Rienzi suddenly excited an insurrection, and obtained 
complete success. He was placed at the head of a new gov- 
ernment, with the title of Tribune, and witli almost unlimited 
power. The first effects of this revolution were wonderful. 
All the nobles submitted, though with great reliictance ; the 
roads were cleared of robbers ; tranquillity was restored at 
home ; some severe examples of justice intimidated offenders ; 
and the tribune was regarded by all the people as the destined 



180 AFFAIRS OF ROME. Chap. III. Part II. 

restorer of Rome and Italy. Though the Court of Avignon 
could not approve of such an usurpation, it temporized enough 
not directly to oppose it. Most of the Italian republics, and 
some of the princes, sent ambassadors, and seemed to recognize 
pretensions which were tolerably ostentatious. The King of 
Hungary and Queen of ISra|)les submitted their quarrel to the 
arbitration of Rienzi, who did not, howevei', undertake to de- 
cide upon it. But this sudden exaltation intoxicated his under- 
standing, and exhibited failings entirely incompatible with his 
elevatetl condition. If Rienzi had lived in our own age, his 
talents, which were really great, would have found their proper 
orbit ; for his character was one not unusual among literary 
])oliticians — a combination of knowledge, eloquence, and en- 
thusiasm for ideal excellence, with vanity, inexperience of man- 
kind, unsteadiness, and physical timidity. As these latter 
qualities became conspicuous, they eclipsed his virtues and 
caused his benefits to be forgotten ; he was compelled to abdi- 
cate his government, and retire into exile. After several years, 
some of which he passed in the prisons of Avignon, Rienzi was 
brought back to Rome, with the title of Senator, and under 
the command of the legate. It was supposed that the Romans, 
who had returned to their habits of insubordination, would 
gladly submit to their favorite tribune. And this proved the 
case for a few months : but after that time they ceased alto- 
gether to respect a man who so little respected himself in ac- 
cepting a station Avhere he could no longer be free ; and Rienzi 
was killed in a sedition.^ 

Once more, not long after the death of Rienzi, the freedom 
of Rome seems to have revived in republican institutions, 
though with names less calculated to inspire peculiar recollec- 
tions. Magistrates called bannerets, chosen from the thirteini 
districts of the city, with a militia of three thousand citizens 
at their command, were i)laced at the head of this common- 
wealth. The great object of this new organization was to 
intimidate the Roman nobility, whose outrages, in the total 
absence of government, had grown intolerable. Several of them 
were hanged the first year by order of the bannerets. In 1435, 
the Romans formally took away the government from Eugenius 
IV., and elected seven signors or chief magistrates, like the 
priors of Florence. But tliis revolution was not of long con- 
tinuance, and the citizens soon after acknowledged the sover- 
eignty of the po]>e. 

- An illustrious female writer has drawn with a single stroke the ch.iracter of 
Rienzi, Crescentius, ami Arnold of Hrescia, the f<ind restorers of Kornan liberty, qui 
nnt pris /es souvenirs jMur les esperances. Corinne, t. l.,p. 15'.». Could Tacitus have 
excelled this ? 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE." 181 

§ 8. The province of Tuscany continued longer than Lom- 
bardy under the government of an imperial lieutenant. It 
was not till about the middle of the twelfth century that the 
cities of Florence, Lucca, Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, Fistoja, and 
several less considerable, which might, perhaps, have already 
their own elected magistrates, became independent republics. 
During the reign of Frederick 11., Florence became, as far as 
she was able, an ally of the })opes. There was, indeed, a strong 
Ghibelin party, comprehending many of the greatest families, 
but the spirit of the people was thoroughly Guelf. After 
several revolutions, accompanied by alternate proscription and 
demolition of houses, the Guelf party, through the assistance 
of Charles of Anjou, obtained a final ascendency in 12(3(3 ; and 
after one or two unavailing schemes of accommodation it was 
established as a fundamental law in the Florentine constitution 
that no person of Ghibelin ancestry could be admitted to offices 
of public trust, which, in such a government, was in effect an 
exclusion from the privileges of citizenship. 

The changes of internal government and vicissitudes of 
success among factions were so frequent at Florence, for many 
years after this time, that she is compared by her great ban- 
ished poet to one m sickness, who, unable to rest, gives her- 
self momentary ease by continual change of posture in her 
bed. They did not become much less numerous after the age 
of Dante. Yet the revolutions of F^lorence should, ])erliaps, 
be considered as no more than a necessary price of her liberty. 
It was her boast and her happiness to have escaped, except 
for one short period, that odious rule of vile usurpers, under 
Avhich so many other free cities had been crushed. A sketch 
of the constitution of so famous a republic ought not to be 
omitted in this ])lace. Nothing else in the history of Italy 
after Frederick II. is so worthy of our attention. 

§ 9. The basis of the Florentine polity was a division of the 
citizens exercising commerce into their several conii)aiiies or 
arts. These Avere at first twelve : seven called the greater 
arts, and five lesser , but the latter Avere gradually increased 
to fourteen. The seven greater arts were those of lawyers and 
notaries, of dealers in foreign cloth, called sometimes Calimala, 
of bankers or money-changers, of woollen-drapers, of physicians 
and druggists, of dealers in silk, and of furriers. The inferior 
arts were those of retailers of cloth, butchers, smiths, shoe- 
makers, and builders. This division was fully established and 
rendered essential to the constitution in 12(3(3. By the pro- 
visions made in that year each of the seven greater arts had a 



182 GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE. Chap. III. Part II. 

council of its own, a chief magistrate or consul, who uduiiuis- 
tered justice in civil causes to all members of his company, 
and a banneret (gonfaloniere) or military oihcer, to whose 
standard they repaired when any attem[it was made to disturb 
the peace of the city. 

The administration of criminal justice belonged at Florence, 
as at other cities, to a foreign Podesta, or rather to two for- 
eign magistrates, the Podesta and the Capitmio del popolo, 
whose jurisdiction appears to have been concurrent. These 
offices were preserved till the innovations of the Medici. The 
domestic magistracies underwent more changes. Instead of 
consuls, which had been the first denomination of the chief 
magistrates of Florence, a college of twelve or fourteen persons 
called Anziani or Ptconuomini, but varying in name as well as 
number, according to revolutions of party, was established nbout 
the middle of the thirteenth century, to direct public affairs. 
This order was entirely changed in 12S2, and gave ]>lace to a 
new form of supreme magistracy, Avhich lasted till the extinc- 
tion of the republic. Six Priors, elected every two months, 
one from each of the six quarters of the city, and from each 
of the greater arts, except that of lawyers, constituted an 
executive magistracy. They lived during their continuance 
in office in a palace belonging to the city, and were nuiintained 
at the public cost. The actual priors, jointly with the chiefs 
and councils (usually called la Cupitudlne) of the seven 
greater arts, and with certain adjuncts (arroti) named by 
themselves, elected by ballot their successors. Such was the 
practice for about forty years after this government was es- 
tablished. But an innovation, begun in 1324, and perfected 
four years afterwards, gave a peculiar character to the consti- 
tution of Florence. A lively and and)itious people, not merely 
jealous of their public sovereignty, but deeming its exercise a 
matter of personal enjoyment, aware at the same time that the 
will of the whole body could neither be immediately expressed 
on all occasions, nor even through chosen representatives, 
without the risk of violence and partiality, fell upon the 
singular idea of admitting all citizens not unworthy by their 
station or conduct to offices of magistracy by rotation. Lists 
were separately made out by the ]u-iors, the twelve buonuo- 
mini, the chiefs and councils of arts, the bannerets and other 
respectable persons, of all citizens, Guelfs by origin, turned of 
thirty years of age, and, in their judgment, worthy of public 
trust. The lists thus formed were then united, and those who 
had composed them, meeting together, in number ninety-seven, 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE. 183 

proceeded to ballot upon every name. Whoever obtained sixty- 
eight black balls was placed upon the reformed list ; and all 
the names it contained being put on separate tickets into a bag 
or purse (imborsati), were drawn successively as the magis- 
tracies were renewed. As there were above fifty of these, none 
of which could be held for more than four months, several hun- 
dred citizens were called in rotation to bear their share in the 
government within two years. But at the expiration of every 
two years the scrutiny was renewed, and fresh names were 
mingled with those which still continued undrawn ; so that ac- 
cident might deprive a man for life of his portion of magistracy. 

Four councils had been established by the constitution of 
12G6 for the decision of all propositions laid before them by 
the executive magistrates, whether of a legislative nature or 
relating to public policy. These were now abrogated ; and 
in their places were substituted one of 300 members, all })lebe- 
ians, called consiglio di popolo, and one of 250, called consiglio 
di commune, into wliicli the nobles might enter. These were 
changed by the same rotation as the magistracies, every four 
months. A Parliament, or general assembly of the Florentine 
])eople, was rarely convoked ; but the leading principle of a 
democratical republic, the ultimate sovereignty of the multi- 
tude, was not forgotten. This constitution of 1324 was fixed 
by the citizens at large in a Parliament ; and the same sanction 
was given to those temporary delegations of the seigniory to 
a prince which occasionally took place. What is technically 
called by their historians /a?'si popolo was the assembly of a 
Parliament, or a resolution of all derivative powers into the 
immediate operation of the popular will. 

The ancient government of this republic appears to have 
been chiefly in the hands of its nobility. These were very 
numerous, and possessed large estates in the district. But 
by the constitution of 126G, which was nearly coincident Avith 
the triumph of the Guelf faction, the essential powers of 
magistracy as well as of legislation Avere throAvn into the 
scale of the commons. The colleges of arts, whose functions 
became so eminent, Avei'e altogether commercial, and it Avas 
necessary to belong to one or other of the greater arts in order 
to be admitted into the executive college of the priors. Many, 
indeed, of the nobles enrolled themselves in these companies, 
and were among the most conspicuous merchants of Florence ; 
but the majority of the ancient families saAV themselves pushed 
aside from the helm, Avhich Avas intrusted to a class Avliom 
they had habitually held in contempt. 



184 GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE. Chap. III. Pakt II. 

§ 10. The nobility, however, set tlie new constitution at 
defiance, and dwelling in strong and lofty houses among their 
kindred, and among the fellows of their rank, committed all 
sorts of outrages with impunity. At length in 1295, Giano 
della Bella, a man of ancient lineage, but attached to the 
])0|)ular side, introduced a series of enactments exceedingly 
disadvantageous to the ancient aristocracy. The first of these 
was the ap})Ointment of an executive officei*, the gonfalonier 
of justice, whose duty it was to enforce the sentences of the 
podesta and capitano del popolo in cases where the ordinary 
officers were insufficient. A thousand citizens, afterwards 
increased to four times that number, were bound to obey his 
commands. They were distributed into companies, the gon- 
faloniers or captains of which became a sort of corporation or 
college, and a constituent part of the Government. This new 
nulitia seems to have superseded that of the companies of arts. 
The gonfalonier of justice was part of the seigniory along 
with the priors, of whom he was reckoned the president, and 
changed, like them, every two months. He was, in fact, the 
first magistrate of Florence. If Giano della TJella had trusted 
to the efficacy of this new security for justice, his fame would 
have been beyond reproach. But he followed it up by harsher 
provisions. The nobility were now made absolutely ineligible 
to the office of prior. For an offence committed by one of a 
noble family, his relations were declared responsible in a 
penalty of 3000 pounds. And, to obviate the difficulty arising 
from the frequent intimidation of witnesses, it was provided 
that common fame, attested by two credible persons, should be 
sufficient for the condemnation of a nobleman. 

These are the famous ordinances of justice which passed at 
Florence for the great cluxrter of her democracy. 

The nobility were soon aware of the position in which they 
stood. For half a century their great object was to procure 
the relaxation of the ordinances of justice. But they had no 
success with an elated enemy. The sort of proscni)tion which 
attended the ancient nobles lowered their spirit ; while a new 
aristocracy began to raise its head, the aristocracy of families, 
who, after filling the highest magistracies for two or three gen- 
erations, obtained an hereditary importance, Avhich answered 
the purpose of more unequivocal nobility ; just as in ancient 
Rome ])lebeian families, by admission to curule offices, acquired 
the character and appellation of nobility, and were only distin- 
guishable by their genealogy from the original patricians. 
Florence had her plebeian nobles (popolani grandi) as well as 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE. 185 

Rome ; the Peruzzi, the Ricci, the Albizi, the Medici, corre- 
spoud to the Catus, the Foinpeys, the Brutuses, and the Anto- 
iiies. But at Rome the two orders, after an equal partition of 
the highest othces, were content to respect their mutual privi- 
leges ; at Florence the commoners preserved a rigorous monop- 
oly, and the distinction of high birth was, that it debarred 
men from political franchises and civil justice. 

This second aristocracy did not obtain much more of the pop- 
ular affection than that which it superseded. In order to keep 
the nobles under more control the governing party more than 
once introduced a new foreign magistrate, with the title of 
captain of defence (della guardia), whom they invested with an 
almost unbounded criminal jurisdiction. One Gabrielli of Agob- 
bio was twice fetched for this purpose (a.d. 1336, 1340) ; and in 
each case he behaved in so tyrannical a manner as to ticcasion a 
tumult. His office, however, was of short duration, and the 
title at least did not import a sovereign command. But very 
soon afterwards Florence had to experience one taste of a cup 
which her neighbors had drunk off to the dregs, and to animate 
her magnanimous love of freedom by a knowledge of the calam- 
ities of tyranny. 

§ 11. A war with Pisa, unsuccessfully, if not unskilfully, 
conducted, gave rise to such dissatisfaction in the city that the 
leading commoners had recourse to an appointment something 
like tiiat of Gabrielli, and from similar motives. Walter de 
Brienne, duke of Athens, was descended from one of the 
French Crusaders who had dismembered the Grecian empire in 
the preceding century ; but his father, defeated in battle, had 
lost the principality along with his life, and the titular duke 
was an adventurer in the Court of France. He had been, how- 
ever, slightly known at Florence on a former occasion. There 
was an uniform maxim among the Italian republics that ex- 
traordinary powers should be conferred upon none but stran- 
gers. The Duke of Athens was accordingly pitched upon for 
the military command, which was united with domestic juris- 
diction. This appears to have been promoted by the governing 
party in order to curb the nobility ; but they were soon unde- 
ceived in their expectations. The first act of the Duke of 
Athens was to bring four of the most eminent commoners to 
capital punishment for military offences. These sentences, 
whether just or otherwise, gave much pleasure to the nobles, 
who had so frequently been exposed to similar severity, and to 
the pojjulace, who are naturally pleased with the humiliation 
of their superiors. Both of these were caressed by the duke, 



ISG GOVERNMENT OF FLOIIENCE. Chap. 111. Pakt II. 

and both conspired, witli blind passion, to second his ambitions 
views. It was proposed and carried in a full Parliament, or 
assembly of the people, to bestow upon him the seigniory for 
life (a.d. 1342). The real friends of their country, as well as 
the oligarchy, shuddered at this measure. Throughout all the 
vicissitudes of party, Florence had never yet lost sight of 
republican institutions. But happily the reign of tyranny was 
very short. The Duke of Athens had neither judgment nor 
activity for so difficult a station. He launched out at once into 
excesses which it would be desirable that arbitrary power 
should always commit at the outset. The taxes were consider- 
ably increased ; their produce was dissipated. The honor of 
the state was sacrificed by an inglorious treaty with Pisa ; her 
territory was diminished by some towns throwing off their 
dependence. Severe and multiplied punishments spread terror 
through the city. Ten months passed in this manner, when 
three; separate conspiracies, embracing most of the nobility 
and of tlie great commoners, were planned for the recovery of 
freedom. Tlie city was barricaded in every direction ; and 
after a contest of some duration the Duke of Athens consented 
to abdicate his seigniory. 

§ 12. Thus Florence recovered her liberty. Her constitu- 
tional laws now seemed to revive of themselves. But the 
nobility, who had taken a very active part in the recent libera- 
tion of their country, tliought it hard to be still placed under 
the rigorous ordinances of justice. The populace of Florence, 
with its characteristic forgetfulness of benefits, was tenacious 
of those proscriptive ordinances. A new civil war in the city 
streets decided their quarrel ; after a desperate resistance, 
many of the principal houses were pillaged and burned ; and 
the per])etual exclusion of the nobility was confirmed by fresh 
laws. But the people, now sure of their triumph, relaxed a 
little upon this occasion the ordinances of justice ; and, to 
make some distinction in favor of merit or innocence, effaced 
certain families from the list of nobility. Five hundred and 
thirty persons were thus elevated, as we may call it, to the 
rank of commoners. Conversely, several unpopular commoners 
were ennobled, in order to disfranchise them. Nothing was 
more usual in subsequent times than such an arbitrary change 
of rank, as a penalty or a benefit. Those nobles who were 
rendered plebeian by favor, were obliged to change their name 
and arms. The constitution now underwent some change. 
From six the priors were increased to eight ; and instead of 
being chosen from each of the greater arts, they were taken 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF FLOKENCE. 187 

from the four quarters of the city. The gonfaloniers of com- 
panies were reduced to sixteen. And these, along with the 
seigniory and the twelve buonuomini, formed the college, where 
every proposition was discussed before it coidd be offered to 
the councils for their legislative sanction. But it could only 
originate, strictly speaking, in the seigniory, that is, the gon- 
falonier of justice, and eight priors, tlie rest of the college 
having merely the function of advice and assistance. 

Several years elapsed before any material disturbance arose 
at Florence ; but in 1357 a spring was set in motion wliicli 
gave quite a different character to the domestic history of 
Florence. At the time when the Guelfs, with the assistance 
of Charles of Anjou, acquired an exclusive domination in the 
republic, the estates of the Ghibelins were confiscated. One- 
third of these confiscations was allotted to the state ; another 
went to repair the losses of Guelf citizens ; but the remainder 
became the property of a new corporate society, denominated 
the Guelf party (parte Guelf a), with a regular internal organ- 
ization. The Guelf party had two councils, one of fourteen 
and one of sixty members ; three, or afterwards four, captains, 
elected by scrutiny every two months, a treasury, and common 
seal — a little republic within the republic of Florence. Their 
primary duty was to watch over the Guelf interest ; and for 
this purpose they had a particular ofiicer for the accusation of 
suspected Ghibelins. We hear not much, however, of the Guelf 
society for near a century after their establishment ; but they 
now began to execute a preponderating infiuence in the state. 
In this society the ancient nobles retained a considerable infiu- 
ence. The laws of exclusion had never been applied to that 
corporation. Two of the captains Avere always noble, two were 
commoners. The people, in debarring the nobility from ordi- 
nary privileges, were little aware of the more dangerous chan- 
nel which had been left open to their ambition. With the 
nobility some of the great commoners acted in concert, and 
esix^cially the family and faction of the Albizi. Tliey carried 
a law by which every person accepting an oifice who should 
be convicted of Ghibelinism or of Ghibelin descent, upon tes- 
timony of public fame, became liable to punishment, caj)ital 
or pecuniary, at the discretion of the priors. To this law they 
gave a retrospective effect. Many citizens who had been ma- 
gistrates within a few years were cast in heavy fines on this 
indefinite charge. But the more usual practice was to warn 
(ammonire) men beforehand against undertaking public trust. 
If they neglected this hint, they were sure to be treated as con- 



188 GOVEKNMENT OF FLOKENCE. Chap. III. Part II. 

victed Ghibelins. Thus a very numerous class, called Ammo- 
niti, was formed of proscribed and discontented persons, eager 
to throw off the intolerable yoke of the Guelf society; for 
the imi)utation of Ghibelin connections was generally an 
unfounded pretext for crushing the enemies of the governing 
faction. Men of approved Guelf principles and origin were 
every day warned from their natural privileges of sharing in 
magistracy. This spread an universal alarm through the city ; 
but the great advantage of union and secret confederacy ren- 
dered the Guelf society, who had also the law on their side, 
irresistible by their opponents. MeanAvhile the public honor 
was well supported abroad ; Florence had never before been so 
distinguished as during the prevalence of this oligarchy. 

§ 13. The Guelf society had governed with more or less ab- 
soluteness for near twenty years, when the republic became 
involved, through the perfidious conduct of the papal legate, 
111 a war with the Holy See. Though the Florentines were by 
no means superstitious, this hostility to the Church ajDpeared 
almost an absurdity to determined Guelfs, and shocked those 
prejudices about names which make up the politics of vulgar 
minds. The Guelf society, though it could not openly resist 
the popular indignation against Gregory XI., was not heartily 
inclined to this war. Its management fell, therefore, into the 
hands of eight commissioners, some of them not well affected 
to the society ; whose administration was so successful and 
popular as to excite the utmost jealousy in the Guelfs. They 
began to renew their warnings, and in eight months excluded 
fourscore citizens. 

The civil dissensions which followed need not be described 
at length. The seven greater arts were generally attached to 
the Guelf Society, while the fourteen lesser arts, composed of 
retail and mechanical traders, were eager to make Florence a 
democracy in fact as well as in name, by participating in the 
executive government. While the lesser arts were murmuring 
at the exclusive privileges of the commercial aristocracy, there 
was yet an inferior class of citizens avIio thought tlieir own 
claims to equal privileges irrefragable. The arrangement of 
twenty-one trading companies had still left several kinds of 
artisans unincorporated, and consequently unprivileged. These 
had been attached to the art with which their craft had most 
connection in a sort of dependent relation. Thus to the 
company of drapers, the most wealthy of all, the various occu- 
pations instrumental in the manufacture, as wool-combers, 
dyers, and weavers, were appendant. Besides the sense of 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE. 18D 

political exclusion, these artisans alleged that they were op- 
pressed by their employers of the art. A still lower order of 
the coinuiunity was the mere populace, who did not practise 
any regular trade, or who only worked for daily hire. These 
were called Ciompi, a corruption, it is said, of the French com- 
pere. 

The inferior tradesmen demanded the establishment of two 
new arts for themselves, and one for the lower people. After 
various seditions, a violent insurrection, in which the ciompi, 
or lowest populace, were alone concerned, broke out. The 
gates of the palace belonging to the seigniory were forced open, 
tlie priors compelled to tly, and no appearance of a constitu- 
tional magistracy remained to throw the veil of law over the 
excesses of anarchy. The re[)ublic seemed to rock from its 
foundations; and tlie circumstance to which historians ascribe 
its salvation is not the least singular in this critical epoch. 
One Michel di Lando, a wool-comber, half-dressed and without 
shoes, hap[)ened to hold the standard of justice, wrested from 
the proper officer when the populace burst into the palace. 
Whether he was previously cons[)icuous in the tumult is not 
recorded; but the wild, ca[)ricious mob, who had destroyed 
what they had no conce[)tion how to rebuild, suddenly cried 
out that Lando should be gonfalonier or signer, and reform the 
city at his pleasure. 

A choice, arising probably from wanton folly, could not 
have been better made by wisdom. Lando was a man of 
courage, moderation, and integrity. He gave immediate 
proofs of these qualities by causing his office to be respected. 
The eight commissioners of the war, who, though not instiga- 
tors of the sedition, were well pleased to see the Guelf party 
so entirely prostrated, now fancied themselves masters, and 
began to nominate priors. But Lando sent a message to them 
that he was elected by the people, and that he could dispense 
with their assistance. He then proceeded to the choice of 
priors. Three were taken from the greater arts ; three from 
the lesser ; and three from the two new arts and the lower 
people. This eccentric college lost no time in restoring tran- 
quillity, and compelled the populace, by threat of punishment, 
to return to their occupations. But the ciompi were not dis- 
posed to give up the pleasures of anarchy so readily. They 
were dissatisfied at the small share allotted to them in the new 
distribution of offices, and murmured at their gonfalonier as a 
traitor to the popular cause. Lando was aware that an insur- 
rection was prjoected ; he took measures with the most respect- 



190 GOVERNMENT OF FLORENCE. Cuap. III. Pakt II. 

able citizens; the insi;rgents, when they showed themselves, 
were quelled by force, and the gonfalonier retired from office 
with an approbation which all historians of Florence have 
agreed to perpetuate. The ciompi, once checked, were soon 
defeated. The next gonfalonier was, like Lando, a wool- 
comber; but, wanting the intrinsic merit of Lando, his mean 
station excited universal contempt. None of the arts could 
endure their low coadjutors ; a short struggle was made by the 
populace, but they were entirely over])owered with consider- 
able slaughter, and the government was divided between the 
seven greater and sixteen lesser arts in nearly equal propor- 
tions. 

The party of the lesser arts, or inferior tradesmen, which 
had begun this confusion, were left winners when it ceased. 
r>ut at tlie end of three years the aristocratical party regained 
its ascendency. They did not revive the severity practised 
towards the Ammoniti ; but the two new arts, created for the 
small trades, were abolished, and the lesser arts reduced to a 
third part, instead of something more than one-half, of public 
offices. For half a century after this time no revolution took 
place at Florence. The Guelf aristocracy, strong iu ojjulence 
and antiquity, and rendered prudent by experience, under the 
guidance of the Albizi family, maintained a preponderating in- 
fluence without much departing, the times considered, from mod- 
eration and respect for the laws. 

§ 14. Though fertile and populous, the proper district of 
Florence was by no means extensive. The republic made 
no acquisition of territory till 1351, when she annexed the 
small city of Prato, not ten miles from her walls. Pistoja, 
though still nominally independent, received a Florentine 
garrison al)out the same time. Several additions were made 
to the district by lair purchase from the nobility of the 
Ap]>enines, and a few by main force. The territory was 
still very little proportioned to the frame and power of Flor- 
ence. The latter was founded upon her vast commercial 
opulence. Every Italian state employed mercenary troops, 
and the richest was, of course, the most powerful. In 1336 
the revenues of Florence are reckoned by Villani at 300,000 
florins, which, as he observes, is more than tlie king of Na- 
ples or Aragon possesses.^ The expenditure went at that 
time very much beyond the receipt, and was defrayed by 
loans from the principal mercantile firms, which were se- 

3 The gold florin was worth about ten shillings of our money. The district of 
Florence was not then much larger tliau Middlesex. 



Italy. PISA. 191 

cured by public funds — the earliest instance, I believe, of 
that financial resource. Her population was computed at 
ninety thousand souls. Viilani reckons the district at eighty 
thousand men, 1 suppose those only of military age ; but 
this calculation must have been too large, even though he 
included, as we may presume, the city in his estimate. Tus- 
cany, though well cultivated and flourishing, does not con- 
tain by any means so great a number of inhabitants in that 
space at present. 

§ 15. The first eminent conquest made by Florence was that 
of Pisa, early in the fifteenth century. Pisa had been distin- 
guished as a commercial city ever since the age of the Otlios. 
From her ports, and those of Genoa, the earliest naval arma- 
ments of the Western nations were fitted out against the Sara- 
cen corsairs who infested the Mediterranean coasts. In the 
eleventh century she undertook, and, after a pretty long strug- 
gle, completed, the important, or at least the splendid, conquest 
of Sardinia, an island long subject to a JMoorish chieftain. 
Her naval prowess was supported by her commerce. A writer 
of the twelfth century reproaches her with the Jews, the Ara- 
bians, and other " monsters of the sea," who thronged in her 
streets. The crusades poured fresh wealth into the lap of the 
maritime Italian cities. In some of those ex^jeditions a great 
portion of the armament was conveyed by sea to l*alestine, and 
freiglited the vessels of Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. When the 
Christians had bought with their blood the sea-coast of Syria, 
these republics procured the most extensive privileges in the 
new states that were formed out of their slender conquests, 
and became the conduits through Avhich the produce of the 
East flowed in upon the ruder nations of Europe. Pisa main- 
tained a large share of this commerce, as well as of maritime 
greatness, till near the end of the thirteenth century. In 1282 
she was in great power, ]iossessing Sardinia, Corsica, and Jillba, 
from whence the republic, as Avell as private persons, derived 
large revenues, and almost ruled the sea with their ships and 
merchandise, and beyond sea were very powerful in the city of 
Acre, and much connected with its principal citizens. The 
prosperous era of Pisa is marked by her public edifices. She 
was the first Italian city that took a pride in architectural 
magnificence. Her cathedral is of the eleventh century ; the 
baptistery, the famous inclined tower, or belfry, the arcades 
that surround the Campo Santo, or cemetery of Pisa, are of the 
twelfth, or, a.t latest, of the thirteenth. 

It would have been no slight anomaly in the annals of Italy, 



192 GENOA. Chap. III. Part II. 

or, we might say, of mankind, if two neighboring cities, com- 
petitors in every naval enterprise, had not been perpetual 
enemies to each otlier. One is more surprised, if the fact be 
true, that no war broke out between Pisa and Genoa till 1119. 
From this time, at least, they continually recurred. An equal- 
ity of forces and of cour;ige kept the conflict uncertain for the 
greater part of two centuries. Their battles were numerous, 
and sometimes, taken separately, decisive; but the public spirit 
and resources of each city were called out by defeat, and we 
generally And a new armament replace the losses of an unsuc- 
cessful combat. In this respect the naval contest between Pisa 
and Genoa, though much longer jirotracted, resembles that of 
Rome and Cartliage in the first Punic war. But Pisa was re- 
served for her ^Egades. In one fatal battle, off the little isle 
of Meloria, in 1284, her whole navy was destroyed. Several 
vinfortunate and expensive armaments had almost exhausted 
the state, and this was the last effort, by private sacrifices, to 
equip one more fleet. After this defeat it was in vain to con- 
tend for empire. Eleven thousand Pisans languislied for many 
years in prison ; it was a current saying that whoever would 
see Pisa should seek her at Genoa. A treacherous chief, that 
Count Ugolino whose guilt was so terribly avenged, is said to 
have purposely lost the battle, and prevented the ransom of 
the captives, to secure his power ; accusations that obtain easy 
credit with an unsucceissful people. 

From the epoch of the battle of Meloria, Pisa ceased to be a 
maritime power. Forty years afterwards she was stripped of 
her ancient colony, the island of Sardinia, which was annexed 
to the crown of Aragon. Her commerce now dwindled with 
her greatness. During the fourteenth century l*isa almost re- 
nounced the ocean, and directed her main attention to the 
})olitics of Tuscany. Ghibelin by invariable predilection, she 
was in constant opposition to the Guelf cities which looked up 
to Florence. ]>ut in the fourteenth century the names of free- 
man and Ghibelin were not easily united ; and a city in that 
interest stood insulated between the republics of an o]iposite 
faction and the tyrants of her own. Pisa fell several times 
imder the yol^e of usurpers ; she was included in the wide- 
spreading accpiisitions of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. At his death 
one of his family seized the dominion, and finally the Floren- 
tines purchased for 400,000 florins a rival and once equal city. 
The Pisans made a resistance more according to what they had 
been than what they were. 

§ 16. The early history of Genoa, in all her foreign relations, 



Italy. WARS OF GENOA. 193 

is involved in that of Pisa. As allies against the Saracens 
of Africa, Spain, and the Mediterranean islands, as co-rivals 
in commerce with these very Saracens or with the Chris- 
tians of the East, as co-operators in the great expeditions under 
the banner of the cross, or as engaged in deadly warfare with 
each other, the two republics stand in continual parallel. 
From the beginning of the thirteenth century Genoa was, I 
think, the more prominent and flourishing of the two. She 
had conquered the island of Corsica at the same time that Pisa 
reduced Sardinia ; and her acquisition, though less consider- 
able, was longer preserved. Her territory at home, the ancient 
Liguria, was much more extensive, and, what was most impor- 
tant, contained a greater range of sea-coast than that of Pisa. 
But the commercial and maritime prosperity of Genoa may l)e 
dated from the recovery of Constantinople by the Greeks in 
1261. Jealous of the Venetians, by whose arms the Latin em- 
perors had been placed, and were still maintained, on their 
throne, the Genoese assisted Palseologus in overturning that 
usurpation. They obtained in consequence the suburb of Pera 
or Galata, over against Constantinople, as an exclusive settle- 
ment, where their colony was I'uled by a magistrate sent from 
home, and frequently defied the Greek capital with its armed 
galleys and intrepid seamen. From this convenient station 
Genoa extended her commerce into the Black Sea, and estab- 
lished her principal factory at Caffa, in the Crimean peninsula. 
This commercial monopoly, for such she endeavored to render 
it, aggravated the animosity of Venice. As Pisa retired from 
the field of waters, a new enemy appeared ujwn the horizon to 
dispute the maritime dominion of Genoa. Her first war with 
Venice was in 1258. The second was not till after the victory 
of Meloria had crushed her more ancient enemy. It broke out 
111 12V)3, and was prosecuted with determined fury and a great 
display of naval strength on both sides. One Genoese arma- 
ment consisted of 155 galleys, each manned with from 200 to 
300 sailors. It was, however, beyond any other exertion. 
The usual fleets of Genoa and Venice were of seventy to ninety 
galleys. 

But the most remarkable war, and that productive of tlie 
greatest consequences, was one that commenced in 1.378, after 
several acts of liostility in tlie Levant. Genoa did not stand 
alone in this war. A formidable confederacy was raised against 
Venice, who had given provocation to many enemies. Of this 
Francis Carrara, signor of Padua, and the King of Hungary 
were the leaders. But the principal struggle was, as usual, 



194 WARS OF GENOA. Chap. III. Part II. 

upon the waves. During the winter of 1378 a Genoese fleet 
ke])t the sea, and ravaged the shores of Dalmatia. The Vene- 
tian arnianient had been weakened by an epidemic disease, and 
when Vittor Pisani, their admiral, gave battle to the enemy, 
he was compelled to fight with a liasty conscription of lands- 
men against the best sailors in the world. Entirely defeated, 
and taking refuge at Venice with only seven galleys, Pisani 
was cast into prison, as if his ill-fortune had been his crime. 
Meanwhile the Genoese fleet, augmented by a strong reinforce- 
ment, rode before the long natural ramparts that separate the 
lagunes of Venice from the Adriatic. Six passages intersect 
tlie islands which constitute this barrier, besides the broader 
outlets of Brondolo and Fossone, through which the waters of 
the Brenta and the Adige are discharged. The lagune itself, 
as IS well known, consists of extremely shallow water, \innav- 
igable for any vessel except along the coiirse of artificial and 
intricate passages. Notwithstanding the apparent ditticulties 
of such an enterprise, l*ietro Doria, the Genoese admiral, de- 
termined to reduce the city. His first successes gave him 
reason to hope. He forced the passage, and stormed the little 
town of Chioggia, built upon the inside of the isle bearing that 
name, about twenty-five miles south of Venice. Nearly four 
thousand prisoners fell here into his hands — an augury, as it 
seemed, of a more splendid trium})h. In the consternation 
tliis misfortune inspired at Venice, the first im])ulse was to ask 
for peace. The ambassadors carried with them seven Genoese 
prisoners, as a sort of peace-ofl'cring to the admiral, and were 
empowered to make large and humiliating concessions, re- 
serving nothing V)ut tlie liberty of Venice. Francis Carrara 
strongly urged his allies to treat for peace. But tlu; Genoese 
were stimulated by long hatred, and intoxicated by this un- 
expected opportunity of revenge. Doria, calling the ambassa- 
dors into council, tlius addressed them : " Ye shall obtain no 
jieace from us, I swear to you, nor from tlie lord of Baduii, till 
first we have put a curb in the mouths of those wild horses 
that stand upon the place of St. Mark. When they are bridled 
you shall have enough of peace. Take back with you your 
Genoese captives, for I am coming within a few days to release 
both them and their companions from your prisons." When 
this answer was reported to tlie Senate, they prepared to de- 
fend themselves with the characteristic firmness of their Gov- 
ernment. Every eye was turned towards a great man unjustly 
punished, their admiral Vittor Pisani. He was called out of 
prison to defend his country amidst general acclamations. 



Italy. WARS OF GENOA. 195 

Under his vigorous command the canals were fortified or oc- 
cupied by large vessels armed with artillery ; thirty-four galleys 
were equipped; every citizen contributed according to his 
power ; in the entire want of commercial resources (for Venice 
had not a merchant-ship during this war) private plate was 
melted ; and the Senate held out the promise of ennobling 
thirty families who should be most forward in this strife of 
patriotism. 

The new fleet was so ill provided with seamen that for some 
months the admiral employed them only in manoeuvring along 
the canals. From some unaccountable supineness, or more 
probably from the insuperable difficulties of the undertaking, 
the Genoese made no assault upon the city. They had, indeed, 
fair grounds to hope its reduction by famine or despair. Every 
access to the continent was cut oft' by the troops of Padua; 
and the King of Hungary had mastered almost all the Venetian 
towns in Istria and along the Dalmatian coast. The Doge 
Contarini, taking the chief command, appeared at length with 
his fleet near Chioggia, before the Genoese were aware. They 
were still less aware of his secret design. He pushed one of 
the large round vessels, then called cocche, into the narrow 
passage of Chioggia which connects the lagune with the sea, 
and, mooring her athwart the channel, interrupted that com- 
munication. Attacked with fury by the enemy, this vessel 
went down on the spot, and the doge improved his advantage 
by sinking loads of stones until the passage became absolutely 
unnavigable. It was still possible for the Genoese fleet to 
follow the principal canal of the lagune towards Venice and 
the northern passages, or to sail out of it by the harbor of 
Brondolo; but, whether from confusion or from miscalculating 
the dangers of their position, they suffered the Venetians t(j 
close tlie canal upon them by the same means they had used 
at Chioggia, and even to ])lace their fleet in the entrance of 
Brondolo so near to the lagune that the Genoese could not 
form their ships in line of battle. The circumstances of the 
two combatants were thus entirely changed. But the Genoese 
fleet, though besieged in Chioggia,, was impregnable, and their 
command of the land secured them from famine. Venice, not- 
withstanding her unex})ected success, was still very far from 
secure : it was difficult for the doge to keep his position through 
the winter ; and if the enemy could a})pear in open sea, the 
risks of combat were extremely hazardous. It is said that the 
Senate deliberated upon transporting the seat of their liberty 
to Candia, and that the doge had announced his intention to 



196 GOVERNMENT OF GENOA. Chap. III. Part II, 

raise the siege of Chioggia, if expected succors did not arrive 
by the 1st of January, 1380. On that very day Carlo Zeno, an 
admiral who, ignorant of the dangers of his country, had been 
supporting the honor of lier flag in the Levant and on the 
coast of Liguria, appeared with a reinforcement of eighteen 
galleys and a store of provisions. From that moment the con- 
fidence of Venice revived. The fleet, now superior in strength 
to the enemy, began to attack them with vivacity. After sev- 
eral months of obstinate resistance, the Genoese — Avhom their 
republic had ineffectually attempted to relieve by a fresh arma- 
ment — blocked up in the town of Chioggia, and pressed by 
hunger, were obliged to surrender. Nineteen galleys only, out 
of forty-eight, were in good condition ; and the crews were 
equally diminished in the ten months of their occupation of 
Chioggia. The pride of Genoa was deemed to be justly hum- 
bled ; and even her own historian confesses that God would 
not suffer so noble a city as Venice to become the spoil of a 
conqueror. 

Though the capture of Chioggia did not terminate the war, 
both parties were exhausted, and willing, next year, to accept 
the mediation of the Duke of Savoy, By the peace of Turin, 
Venice surrendered most of her territorial possessions to the 
King of Hungary, That prince and Francis Carrara were the 
only gainers. Genoa obtained the isle of Tenedos, one of the 
original subjects of dispute — a poor indemnity for her losses. 
Though, upon a hasty view, the result of this war appears 
more unfavorable to Venice, yet in fact it is the epoch of the 
decline of Genoa. From this time she never commanded the 
ocean with such navies as before ; her commerce gradually 
went into decay ; and the fifteenth century — the most splendid 
in the annals of Venice — is, till recent times, the most igno- 
minious in those of Genoa. But this was partly owing to 
internal dissensions, by which her liberty, as well as glory, 
was for a while sixspendcd. 

§ 17. At Genoa, as in other cities of Lombardy, the princi- 
pal magistrates of the republic were originally styled consuls. 
Tlieir number varied from four to six, annually elected by the 
people in their full Parliament. These consuls joresided over 
the republic, and commanded the forces by land and sea; while 
another class of magistrates, bearing the same title, were an- 
nually elected by the several companies into which the people 
were divided, for the administration of civil justice. This was 
the regimen of the twelfth century ; but in the next Genoa fell 
into the fashion of intrusting the executive power to a foreign 



Italy. GOVERNMEN'i: OF GENOA. 197 

podesta. The podesta was assisted by a council of eight, cho- 
sen by the eight companies of nobility. This institution gave 
not only an aristocratic, but almost an oligarchical character 
to the constitution, since many of the nobility were not inem- 
bers of these eight societies. Of the Senate or Councils we 
hardly know more than their existence ; they are very little 
mentioned by historians. Everything of a general nature, 
everything that required the expression of public will, was 
reserved for the entire aud unrepresented sovereignty of the 
people. In no city was the Parliament so often convened — 
for war, for peace, for alliance, for change of government. 
These very dissonant elements were not likely to harmonize. 
The people, sufficiently accustomed to the forms of democracy 
to imbibe its spirit, repined at the practical influence which 
was thrown into the scale of the nobles. Among the nobility 
themselves, four houses v/ere distinguished beyond all the rest 
— the Grimaldi, the Fieschi, the Doria, the Spinola; the two 
former of Guelf politics, the latter adherents of the Empire. 
Perhaps their equality of forces, and a jealousy which even 
the families of the same faction entertained of each other, pre- 
vented any one from usurping the signiory at Genoa. Neither 
the Guelf nor Ghibelin party obtaining a decided preponder- 
ence, continual revolutions occurred in the city. The most cel- 
ebrated was in 1339, which led to the election of the first 
doge. A large fleet in want of pay broke out in open insur- 
rection. Savona and the neighboring towns took arms avow- 
edly against the aristocratical tyranny ; and the capital was 
itself on the point of joining the insurgents. There was, by 
the Genoese constitution, a magistrate named the abbot of the 
people, acting as a kind of tribune for their i)iotection against 
the oppression of the nobility. This office had been abolished 
by the present government, and it was the first demand of tlie 
malcontents that it sliould l)e restored. This was acceded to, 
and twenty delegates were appointed to make the choice. 
While they delayed, and the pojmlace was grown weary with 
waiting, a nameless artisan called out from an elevated station 
that he could direct them to a fit person. When the people, in 
jest, bade him speak on, he uttered the name of Simon Boccane- 
gra. This was a man of noble birth, and well esteemed, who 
was then present among the crowd. The word was suddenly 
taken up ; a cry was heard that Boceanegra should be abbot : 
he was instantly brought forward, and the sword of justice 
forced into his hand. As soon as silence could be obtained he 
modestly thanked them for their favor, but declined an office 



198 REVOLUTION OF GENOA. Chap. III. Part II. 

which his nobility ciisqualitiecl him from exercising. At tliis a 
single voice out of the crowd exclaimed, " Signor ! " and this 
title was reverberated from every side. Fearful of worse con- 
sequences, the actual magistrates urged him to comply with the 
people and accept the office of abbot. P>ut Boccanegra, ad- 
dressing the assembly, declared his readiness to become their 
abbot, signor, or whatever they would. The cry of " Sig- 
nor ! " was now louder than before ; while others cried out, 
" Let him be duke ! " The latter title was received with greater 
approbation ; and Boccanegra was conducted to the palace, the 
first duke, or doge, of Genoa. 

Caprice alone, or an idea of more pomp and dignity, led the 
populace, we may conjecture, to prefer this title to that of 
signor ; but it produced important and highly beneficial con- 
sequences. In all neighboring cities an arbitrary government 
had been already established under their respective signors ; 
the name was associated Avith indefinite power, while that of 
doge had only been taken by the elective and very limited 
chief magistrate of another maritime republic. Neither Boc- 
canegra nor his successors ever rendered their authority un- 
limited or hereditary. The constitution of Genoa, from an 
oppressive aristocracy, became a mixture of the two other 
forms, with an exclusion of the nobles from power. Those 
four great families who had domineered alternately for almost 
a century lost their intiuence at home after the revolution of 
1339. Yet, what is remarkable enough, thf^y were still selected 
in preference for the highest of trusts ; tlieir names are still 
identified with the glory of Genoa; her fleets hardly sailed 
but under a Doria, a Spinola, or a Grimalda — such confidence 
could the re])ublic bestow upon their patriotism, or that of 
those wliom they coiumanded. Meanwhile two or three new 
families, a plel)eian oligarchy, filled their place in domestic 
honors ; the Adorni, the Fregosi, the Montalti, contended for 
the ascendant. From their com]>etition ensued revolutions 
too numerous almost for a separate history; in four years, 
from 1390 to 1394, the doge was ten times changed — swept 
away or brought back in the fluctuations of popular tumult. 
Antoniotto Adorno, four times doge of Genoa, had sought the 
friendsliip of Gian Galeazzo Visconti ; but that crafty tyrant 
meditated the subjugation of the republic, and played her fac- 
tions against one another to render her fall secure. Adorno 
perceived that there was no hope for ultimate independence 
but by making a temporary sacrifice of it. His own power, 
ambitious as he had been, he voluntarily resigned ; and placed 



Italy. VENICE. 199 

the republic undei- the protection or signiory of the King of 
France. Terms were stipuhited very favorable to her liberties ; 
but, with a French garrison once received into the city, they 
were not always sure of observance. 

§ 18. While Genoa lost even her political independence, 
Venice became more conspicuous and jjowerful than before. 
That famous republic deduces its original, and even its lib- 
erty, from an era beyond tlie commencement of the Middle 
Ages. The Venetians boast of a perpetual emancipation from 
the yoke of barbarians. From that ignominious servitude 
some natives of Acpiileia and neighboring towns fled to the 
small cluster of islands that rise amidst the shoals at the 
mouth of the Brenta. Here they built the town of llivoalto, 
the modern Venice, in 421 ; but their chief settlement was, 
till the beginning of the ninth century, at Malamocco. Both 
the Western and the Eastern empire alternately pretended to 
exercise dominion over her ; she was conquered by l*e[)in, sou 
of Charlemagne, and restored by him, as the chroniclers say, 
to the Greek emperor, Nicephorus. Tliere is every appearance 
that the Venetians had always considered themselves as sub- 
ject to the Eastern Empire. And this connection was not 
broken in the early part, at least, of the tenth century. But, 
for every essential purpose, Venice might long before be 
deemed an independent state. Her doge was not confirmed at 
Constantinople ; she paid no tribute, and lent no assistance in 
war. Her own navies, in the ninth century, encountered the 
Normans, the Saracens, and the Sclavonians in the Adriatic 
Sea. Upon the coast of Dalmatia were several Greek cities, 
which the Empire had ceased to protect, and which, like Venice 
itself, became republics for want of a master, ilagusa was 
one of these, and, more fortunate than the rest, survived as an 
independent city till our own age. In return for the assistance 
of Venice, these little sea-ports put themselves under her gov- 
ernment; the Sclavonian pirates were repressed; and after 
acquiring, partly by consent, partly by arms, a large tract of 
maritime territory, the doge took the title of Duke of Dalma- 
tia. Three or four centuries, however, elapsed before the 
republic became secure of these conquests, which were fre- 
quently wrested from lier by rebellions of the inhabitants, or 
by her powerful neighbor, the King of Hungary. 

A more important source of Venetian greatness was com- 
merce. In the darkest and most barbarous period, before Genoa 
or even Pisa had entered into mercantile pursuits, Venice car- 
ried on an extensive traffic both with the Greek and Saracen 



200 HEIl GOVERNMENT. Ciiap. III. Pakt II. 

regions of the Levant. The Crnsades enriched and aggrandized 
Venice more, perhaps, than any other city. Her splendor 
may, however, be dated from the taking of Constantinople by 
the Latins in 1204. In this famous enterprise, which diverted 
a great armament destined for the recovery of Jerusalem, the 
French and Venetian nations were alone engaged ; but the 
former only as private adventurers, the latter with the whole 
strength of their reyniblic under its doge, Henry Dandolo. 
Tliree-eighths of the city of Constantinople, and an equal pro- 
])ortion of the provinces, were allotted to them in the partition 
of the spoil, and the doge took the singular but accurate title, 
Duke of three-eighths of the Roman Empire. Their share was 
increased by purchases from less opulent crusaders, especially 
one of much im])ortance, tlie island of Candia, which they 
retained till the middle of the sevententh century. These 
foreign acrpiisitions were generally granted out in lief to pri- 
vate Venetian nobles under the su])remacy of the re]:)ublic. It 
was thus that the Ionian islands, to ado})t the vocabulary of 
our da}'^, came under the dominion of Venice, and guaranteed 
that sovereignty which slie now began to affect over the Adri- 
atic. Those of the Archijielago were lost in the sixteenth cen- 
tury. This political greatness was sustained by an increasing 
commerce. No Christian state preserved so considerable an 
intercourse with the Mohammedans. While Genoa kept the 
keys of the Black Sea by her colonies of Pera and Caffa, Venice 
directed her vessels to Acre and Alexandria. These connec- 
tions, as is the natural effect of trade, deadened the sense of 
religious antipathy ; and the Venetians were sometimes charged 
witli obstructing all efforts towards a new crusade, or even any 
partial attacks upon the Mohammedan nations. 

§ 19. The earliest form of government at Venice, as we 
collect from an epistle of Cassiodorus in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, was by twelve annual tribunes. Perliaps the union of 
the different islanders was merely federative. However, in 
697, they resolved to elect a chief magistrate by name of 
duke, or, in their dialect. Doge of Venice. No councils ap- 
pear to have limited his power, or represented the national 
will. The doge was general and judge ; he was sometimes 
permitted to associate his son with him, and thus to prepare 
the road for hereditary power ; his government had all the 
prerogatives, and, as far as in such a state of manners was 
possible, the pomp, of a monarchy. But he acted in impor- 
tant matters with the concurrence of a general assembly, 
though, from the want of positive restraints, his executive 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF VENICE. 201 

government might be considered as nearly absolnte. Time, 
however, demonstrated to the Venetians the imperfections 
of such a constitution. Limitations were accortlingly im- 
posed on the doge, and at length, in 1172, the Great Council 
was established. It was at first elective, and annually re- 
newed ; but it became gradually, by successive changes, an 
exclusive hereditary aristocracy, and, in 1319, all elective 
forms were abolished. By the constitution of Venice as it 
was then settled, every descendant of a member of the Great 
Council, on attaining twenty-tive years of age, entered as of 
right into that body, which, of course, became unlimited in 
its numbers. 

But an assembly so numerous as the Great Council could 
never have conducted the jjublic affairs with that secrecy 
and steadiness which were characteristic of Venice ; and 
without an intermediary power between the doge and the 
patrician multitude the constitution would have gained noth- 
ing in stability to compensate for the loss of popular freedom. 
The executive goveriiment was committed to a Senate, con- 
sisting of sixty members, in which the doge presided, and 
to which tlie care of the state in all domestic and foreign 
relations, and the previous deliberation upon proposals sub- 
mitted to the Great Council, was confided. It was enlarged 
in the fourteenth century by sixty additional members ; and 
as a great part of tlie magistrates had also seats in it, the 
whole number amounted to between two and three hundred. 
Though the legislative power, properly speaking, remained 
with the Great Council, the Senate used to impose taxes, and 
had the exclusive riglit of making peace and war. It was 
annually renewed, like almost all other councils at Venice, 
by the Great Council. But since even this body was too 
numerous for the preliminary discussion of business, six coun- 
cillors, forming, along with the doge, the Signiory, or visil)le 
re])resentative of the republic, were empowered to despatch 
orders, to correspond with ambassadors, to treat with foreign 
states, to convoke and preside in the councils, and ])erform 
other duties of an administration. 

It might be imagined that a dignity so shorn of its lustre as 
that of doge would not excite an overweening ambition. But 
the Venetians were still jealous of extinguished power; and 
while their constitution was yet immature the Great Council 
planned new methods of restricting their chief magistrate. An 
oath was taken by the doge on his election, so comprehensive 
as to embrace every possible check upon undue influence. He 



202 GOVERNMENT OF VENICE. Chap. III. Taut II, 

was bound not to correspond with foreign states, or to open 
their letters, except in the presence of tlie signiory ; to acquire 
no pro})erty beyond the Venetian dominions, and to resign what 
he might already possess ; to interpose, directly or indirectly, 
in no judicial process; and not to permit any citizen to use 
tokens of subjection in saluting him. As a further security, 
they devised a remarkably complicated mode of suppl^dng the 
vacancy of his office. As many balls as there were members 
of the Great Council present were placed in an urn. Thirty of 
these were gilt. The holders of gilt balls were reduced by a 
second ballot to nine. The nine elected forty, whom lot reduced 
to twelve. The twelve chose twenty-five by se})arate nomina- 
tion. The twenty-five were reduced by lot to nine ; and eacli 
of the nine chose five. These forty-five were reduced to (dcven, 
as before; the eleven elected forty-one, who were the idtimate 
voters for a doge. This intricacy apj)ears useless, and conse- 
quently absurd ; but the original i)rinciple of a Venetian elec- 
tion (for something of the same kind was applied to all their 
councils and magistrates) may not always be unworthy of 
imitation. 

An hereditary prince could never have remained quiet in 
such trammels as were imposed upon the Doge of Venice. But 
early prejudice accustoms men to consider restraint, even upon 
tliemselves, as advantageous ; and tlie limitations of ducal 
])ower appeared to every Venetian as fundamental as the great 
laws of the English constitution do to ourselves. For life the 
chief magistrates of their country, her noble citizens forever, 
they might thank her in their own name for what she gave, 
and in that of their posterity for what she withheld. Once 
only a doge of Venice was tempted to betray the freedom of 
the republic. INIarin Falieri, a man far advanced in life, en- 
gaged, for some petty resentment, in a wild intrigue to overturn 
the government. The conspiracy was soon discovered, and the 
doge avowed his guilt. An aristocracy so firm and so severe 
did not hesitate to order his execution in the ducal palace 
(A.D. 1355). 

The commonalty, however, did not quietly acquiesce in 
their exclusion from the Great Council. Several commotions 
took place about the beginning of the fourteenth century, with 
the object of restoring a more popular regimen. Upon the 
suppression of the last, in 1310, the aristocracy sacrificed their 
own individual freedom along with that of the people, to the 
preservation of an imaginary privilege. Tliey established the 
famous Council of Ten, that most remarkable part of the Vene- 



Italy. GOVERNMENT OF VENICE. 203 

tiaii constitution. This council, it should be observed, con- 
sisted in fact of seventeen, comprising the signiory, or the 
doge and his six councillors, as Avell as the ten pro])erly so 
called. The Council of Ten had by usage, if not by right, a 
controlling and dictatorial power over the Senate and other 
magistrates, rescinding their decisions, and treating separately 
with foreign princes. Their vast influence strengthened the 
executive government, of which they formed a part, and gave 
a vigor to its movements which the jealousy of the councils 
would possibly have impeded. But they are chiefly known as 
an arbitrary and inquisitorial tribunal, the standing tyranny of 
Venice. Excluding the old council of forty, to which had been 
intrusted the exercise of criminal justice, not only from the in- 
vestigation of treasonable charges, but of several other crimes 
of magnitude, they inquired, they judged, they punished, ac- 
cording to what they called reason of state. The ]»ublic eye 
never penetrated the mystery of their proceedings ; the accused 
was sometimes not heard, never confronted with witnesses ; 
the condemnation was secret as tlie inquiry, the jjunishment 
undivulged like both. The terrible and odious machinery of a 
police, the insidious spy, the stipendiary informer unknown to 
the carelessness of feudal governments, found their natural 
soil in the republic of Venice. Tumultuous assemblies were 
scarcely possible in so peculiar a city ; and private conspiracies 
never failed to be detected by the vigilance of the Council of 
Ten. Compared with the Tuscan republics, the tranquillity of 
Venice is truly striking. The names of Guelf and Ghibelin 
hardly raised any emotion in her streets, though the Govern- 
ment was considered in the first part of the fourteenth century 
as rather inclined towards the latter party. But the wildest 
excesses of faction are less dishonoring than the stillness and 
moral degradation of servitude. 

§ 20. Until almost the middle of the fourteenth century 
Venice had been content without any territorial possessions in 
Italy ; unless we reckon a very narrow strip of sea-coast, bor- 
dering on her lagunes, called the Dogato. Neutral in the great 
contests between the Church and the Empire, between the free 
cities and their sovereigns, she was respected by both parties, 
while neither ventured to claim her as an ally. But the rapid 
progress of Mastino della Scala, lord of Verona, with some 
particular injuries, led the Senate to form a league with Flor- 
ence against him. The result of this combination was to annex 
the district of Treviso to the Venetian dominions. But they 
made no further conquests in that age. On the contrary, they 



204 WARS OF MILAN AND VENICE. Chap. III. Tart II. 

lost Treviso in the unfortunate war of Cliiogga, and did not 
regain it till 1389. Nor did they seriously attempt to with- 
stand the progress of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, who, after over- 
throwing the family of Scala, stretched almost to the Adriatic, 
and altogether subverted for a time the balance of power in 
Lombardy. 

But upon tlie death of this prince, in 1404, a remarkable 
crisis took place in that country. He left two sons, Giovanni 
Maria and Filippo Maria, both young, and under the care of a 
mother who was little fitted for her situation. Through her 
nusconduct and the selfish ambition of some military leaders, 
who had commanded Gian Galeazzo's mercenaries, that exten- 
sive dominion was soon broken into fragments. Bergamo, 
Como, Lodi, Cremona, and other cities revolted, submitting 
themselves in general to the families of their former princes, 
tlie earlier race of usurpers, Avho had for nearly a century been 
crushed by the Visconti. A Guelf faction revived after the 
name had long been proscribed in Lombardy. Francesco da 
Carrara, lord of Padua, availed himself of this revolution to 
get possession of Verona, and seemed likely to unite all the 
cities beyond the Adige. No family was so odious to the Vene- 
tians as that of Carrara. Though they had seemed indifferent 
to the more real danger in Gian Galeazzo's lifetime, they took 
up arms against this inferior enemy. Both I'adua and Verona 
were reduced, and, the Duke of Milan ceding Vicenza, the 
republic of Venice came suddenly into the possession of an ex- 
tensive territory. Francesco da Carrara, who had surrendered 
in his capital, was put to death in prison at Venice. 

Notwithstanding the deranged condition of the Milanese, 
no further attempts were made b}^ the Senate of Venice for 
twenty years. They had not yet acquired that decided love 
of war and conquest which soon began to influence them 
against all the rules of their ancient policy. Meantime the 
dukes of Milan had recovered a great part of their dominions 
as rapidly as they had lost them. Giovanni IVIaria, the elder 
brother, a monster of guilt even among the Visconti, having 
been assassinated, Filippo Maria assumed tlie government of 
Milan and Pavia, almost his only possessions. But though 
weak and unwarlike himself, he had the good-fortune to em- 
\)\oj Carmagnola, one of the greatest generals of that military 
age. Most of the revolted cities were tired of their new mas- 
ters, and, their inclinations conspiring with Carmagnola's 
eminent talents and activity, the house of Visconti reassumed 
its former ascendency from the Sessia to the Adige. Its for- 



Italy. WARS OF MILAN AND VENICE. 205 

tunes might have been still more prosperous if Filippo Maria 
had not rashly as well as ungratefully ott'endecl Carmagnola. 
That great captain retired to Venice, and inflamed a disposi- 
tion towards war which the Florentines and the Duke of 
Savoy had already excited. The Venetians had previously 
gained some important advantages in another quarter, by re- 
ducing the country of Friuli, with part of Istria, which had 
for many centuries de[)ended on the temporal authority of a 
neigliboring prelate, the patriarch of Aquileia. They entered 
into this new alliance. No undertaking of the republic had 
been more successful. Carmagnola led on their armies, and 
in about two years Venice acquired Brescia and Bergamo, and 
extended her boundary to the river Adda, which she was des- 
tined never to pass (a.d. 1426). 

§ 21. Such conquests could only be made by a city so pecu- 
liarly maritime as Venice through the help of mercenary 
trooi)S. But, in employing them, she merely conformed to a 
fashion which states to whom it was less indispensable had 
long since established. A great revolution had taken ])laee in 
the system of military service through most parts of Europe, 
but especially in Italy. During the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries, whether the Italian cities were engaged in their 
contest with the emperors or in less arduous and general hos- 
tilities among each other, they seem to have poured out almost 
their whole population as an armed and loosely organized 
militia. This militia was of course principally com[)ose(l of 
infantry. Gentlemen, however, were always mounted ; and 
the superiority of a heavy cavalry must have been })rodigiously 
great over an undisciplined and ill-armed populace. In the 
tliirteenth and following centuries armies seem to have been 
considered as formidable nearly in proportion to the number 
of men-at-arms or lancers. A charge of cavalry was irresisti- 
ble ; battles were continually won by inferior numbers, and 
vast slaughter was made among the fugitives. 

As the comparative inefficiency of foot-soldiers became 
evident, a greater proportion of cavalry was employed, and 
armies, though better equipped and disciplined, were less 
numerous. This we find in the early part of the fourteenth 
century. The main point for a state at war was to obtain a 
sufficient force of men-at-arms. As few Italian cities could 
muster a large body of cavalry from their own population, 
the obvious resource was to hire mercenary troops. Many 
soldiers of fortune from Germany, France, and Hungary, en- 
gaged in the service of the Italian states. Their services were 



206 MILITARY SYSTEM OF ITALY. Chai'. 111. Pakt II. 

anxiously solicited and abundantly repaid. An unfortunate 
prejudice in favor of strangers prevailed among the Italians 
of that age. They ceded to them, one knows not wliy, cer- 
tainly without having been vantiuished, the palm of military 
skill and valor. The word Transalpine (Oltramontani) is 
frequently applied to hired cavalry by the two Villani as an 
epithet of excellence. 

The experience of every fresh campaign now told more and 
more against the ordinary militia. It has been usual for 
modern writers to lament the degeneracy of martial spirit 
among the Italians of tliat age. But the contest was too un- 
ec^ual between an absolutely invulnerable body of cuirassiers 
and an infantry of peasants or citizens. Tlie cavalry had 
about this time laid aside the hauberk, or coat of mail, tlieir 
ancient distinction from the unprotected populace ; which, 
tliough incapable of being cut through by the sabre, afforded 
no defence against the pointed sword introduced in the thir- 
teenth century, nor repelled the impulse of a lance or the 
crushing blow of a battle-axe. Plate-armor was substituted in 
its place ; and the man-at-arms, cased in entire steel, the 
several pieces firmly riveted, and proof against every stroke, 
his charger protected on the face, chest, and shoulders, or, as 
it was called, barded with plates of steel, fought with a security 
of success against enemies inferior perhaps only in these 
adventitious sources of courage to himself. 

§ 22. It could hardly be expected that stipendiary troops, 
chiefly composed of Germans, would conduct themselves with- 
out insolence and contempt of the effeminacy which courted 
their services. Indifferent to the cause they supported, the 
highest pay and tlie richest plunder were their constant mo- 
tives. As Italy was generally the theatre of war in some of 
her numerous states, a soldier of fortune, witli his lance and 
charger for an inheritance, passed from one service to another 
without regret and without discredit. But if peace hapj)ened 
to be pretty universal, he might be thrown out of his only 
occupation, and reduced to a very inferior condition, in a coun- 
try of which he was not a native. It naturally occurred to 
men of their feelings, that, if money and honor could only be 
had while the}^ retained their arms, it was their own fault if 
they ever relinquished them. Upon this principle they first 
acted in 1343, when the republic of Pisa disbanded a large 
body of German cavalry whicli had been employed in the war 
with Florence. A partisan, whom the Italians call the Duke 
Guariiieri, engaged these dissatisfied mercenaries to remain 



Italy. SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD. 207 

united under liis command. His plan was to levy contributions 
on all countries wliicli he entered with his company, without 
aiming at any conquests. This was the first of the companies 
of adventure, which continued for many years to be the 
scourge and disgrace of Italy. Guarnieri, after some time, 
withdrew his troops, satiated with plunder, into Germany ; but 
he served in the invasion of Naples by Louis, king of Hungary, 
in 1348, and, forming a new company, ravaged the ecclesiasti- 
cal state. A still more formidable band of disciplined robbers 
appeared in 1353, under the command of ' Fra Moriale, and 
afterwards of Conrad Lando. This was denominated the 
Great Company, and consisted of several thousand regular 
troops, besides a multitude of half-armed ruffians, who assisted 
as spies, pioneers, and plunderers. The rich cities of Tuscany 
and Romagna paid large sums that the Great Company, which 
was perpetually in motion, might not march through their 
territory. 

None of the foreign partisans who entered into the service 
of Italian states acquired such renown in that career as an 
Englishman whom contemporary writers call Aucud or Agutus, 
but to whom we may restore his national appellation of Sir 
John Hawkwood. This very eminent man had served in the 
war of Edward III., and obtained his knighthood from that 
sovereign, though originally, if we may trust common fame, 
bred to the trade of a tailor. After the peace of Bretigni, France 
was ravaged by the disbanded troops, whose devastations 
Edward was accused, perhaps unjustly, of secretly instigating. 
A large body of these, under the name of the White Comjiany, 
passed into the service of the Marquis of Montferrat. They 
were sometime afterwards employed by the Pisans against 
Florence ; and during this latter war Hawkwood appears as 
their commander. Fov thirty years he was continually engaged 
in the service of the Visconti, of the pope, or of the Floren- 
tines, to whom he devoted himself for the latter part of his life 
with more lidelity and steadiness than he had shown in his 
first campaigns. The republic testified her gratitude by a pub- 
lic funeral, and by a monument in the Duomo, which still per- 
petuates his memory. 

The name of Sir John Hawkwood is worthy to be remem- 
bered as that of the first distinguished commander who had 
appeared in Europe since the destruction of the Roman Em- 
pire. It would be absurd to suppose that any of the constitu- 
ent elements of military genius which nature furnishes to 
energetic characters were wanting to the leaders of a barbarian 



208 SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD. Chap. III. Part II. 

or feudal army : untroubled perspicacity in confusion, firm 
decision, rapid execution, providence against attack, fertility 
of resource and stratagem — these are in quality as much 
required from the chief of an Indian tribe as from the accom- 
plished commander. But we do not find them in any instance 
so consummated by habitual skill as to challenge the name of 
generalship. Hawkwood appears to me the first real general 
of modern times — the earliest master, however imperfect, in 
the science of Turenne and Wellington. Every contemporary 
Italian historian speaks with admiration of his skilful tactics 
in battle, his stratagems, his well-conducted retreats. Praise 
of this description is hardly bestowed, certainly not so continu- 
ally, on any former captain. 

Hawkwood was not only the greatest but the last of the 
foreign condottieri, or captains of mercenary bands. While he 
was yet living, a new military school had been formed in Italy, 
which not only superseded, but eclipsed, all the strangers. 
This important reform was ascribed to Alberic di Barbiano, 
lord of some petty territories near Bologna. He formed a 
company altogether of Italians about the year 1379. It is not 
to be supposed that natives of Italy had before been abso- 
lutely excluded from service. But this was the first trading 
company, if I may borrow the analogy, the first regular body 
of Italian mercenaries, attached only to their commander with- 
out any consideration of party, like the Germans and English 
of Lando and Hawkwood. Alberic di Barbiano, though him- 
self no doubt a man of military talents, is principally distin- 
guished by the school of great generals which tlie company of 
St. George under his command produced, and which may be 
deduced, by regular succession, to tlie sixteenth century. 

Tavo of tlie most distinguished members of this sc1k)o1 were 
Braccio di JNIontone, a noble Perugian, and Sforza Attendolo, 
originally a peasant in the village of Cotignuola. Nearly equal 
in reputation, unless perhaps Braccio may be reckoned the 
more consummate general, they were divided by a long rivalry, 
which descended to the next generation, and involved all the 
distinguished leaders of Italy. The distractions of Naples, 
and the anarchy of the ecclesiastical state, gave scope not 
only to their military but political ambition. Sforza was 
invested with extensive fiefs in the kingdom of Naples, and 
with the office of Great Constable. Braccio aimed at inde- 
pendent acquisitions, and formed a sort of principality around 
Perugia. This, however, was entirely dissipated at his death. 

When Sforza and Braccio were no more, their respective 



Italy. FRANCESCO SFORZA. 209 

parties were headed by the son of the former, Francesco Sforza, 
and by Nicolas Piccinino, who for more than twenty years 
fought, with few exceptions, under opposite banners. Picci- 
nino, was constantly in the service of Milan. Sforza married 
Bianca, the natural daughter and only child of Filippo Maria, 
duke of Milan, and last of his family, But upon the death of 
Filippo Maria in 1447, the citizens of Milan revived their re- 
publican government. A republic in that part of Lombardy 
might, with the help of Venice and Florence, have withstood 
any domestic or foreign usurpation. But Venice was hostile, 
and Florence indifferent. Sforza became the general of this 
new state, aware tliat such would be the probable means of 
becoming its master. No politician of that age scrupled any 
breach of faith for his interest. Sforza, with his army, de- 
serted to the Venetians ; and the republic of Milan, being both 
incapable of defending itself and distracted by civil dissen- 
sions, soon fell a prey to his ambition. In 1450 he was pro- 
claimed duke, rather by right of election, or of conquest, than 
in virtue of his marriage with Bianca, whose sex, as well as 
illegitimacy, seemed to preclude her from inheriting. 

§ 23. Whatever evils might be derived, and they were not 
trifling, from the employment of foreign or native mercena- 
ries, it was impossible to discontinue the system without general 
consent ; and too many states found their own advantage in it 
for such an agreement. The condottieri were, indeed, all 
notorious for contempt of engagements. Their rapacity was 
equal to their bad faith. Besides an enormous pay, for every 
private cuirassier received much more in value than a subaltern 
officer at present, they exacted gratifications for every success. 
But every thing was endured by ambitious governments who 
wanted their aid. Florence and Venice were the two states 
which owed most to the companies of adventure. The one 
loved war without its perils ; the other could never have ob- 
tained an inch of territory with a population of sailors. But 
they were both almost inexhaustibly rich by commercial in- 
dustry ; and as the surest pay-masters, were best served by 
those they employed. 

The Italian armies of the fifteenth century have been re- 
marked for one striking peculiarity. War has never been 
conducted at so little personal hazard to the soldier. Coiiibats 
frequently occur, in the annals of that age, wherein success, 
though warmly contested, cost very few lives even to the 
vanquished. This innocence of blood, which some historians 
turn into ridicule, was no doubt owing in a great degree to 



210 INVENTION OF GUNPOWDEE. Chap. III. Part II. 

the rapacity of the companies of adventure, who, in expecta- 
tion of enriching themselves by the ransom of prisoners, were 
anxious to save their lives. But it was rendered more practi- 
cable by the nature of their arms. For once, and for once only, 
in the history of mankind, the art of defence liad outstripped 
that of destruction. In a charge of lancers many fell, un- 
horsed by the shock, and might be suffocated or bruised to 
death by the pressure of their own armor ; but the lance's 
point could not penetrate the breastplate, the sword fell harm- 
less on the helmet, the conqueror, in the first impulse of pas- 
sion, could not assail any vital part of a prostrate but not 
exposed enemy. Still less was to be dreaded from the archers 
or cross-bowmen, who composed a large part of the infantry. 
The bow indeed, as drawn by an English foot-soldier, was the 
most formidable of arms before the invention of gunpowder. 
It was a peculiarly English weapon, and none of the other 
principal nations adopted it so generally or so successfully. 
The cross-bow, which brought the strong and weak to a level, 
was more in favor upon the Continent. But both the arrow 
and the quarrel glanced away from plate-armor, such as it 
became in the fifteenth century, impervious in every point, 
except when the visor was raised from the face, or some part 
of the body accidentally exposed. The horse, indeed, was less 
completely protected. 

Meanwhile a discovery accidentally made had prepared the 
way not only for a change in the military system, but for po- 
litical effects still more extensive. There seems little reason 
to doubt that gunpowder was introduced through the means 
of the Saracens into Europe. Its use in engines of war, though 
they may seem to have been rather like our fire-works tlian 
artillery, is mentioned by an Arabic writer in the Escurinl col- 
lection about the year 1249. It was known not long after- 
wards to our philos()[)her Roger Bacon, though he concealed, 
in some degree, the secret of its composition. In the first 
part of the fourteenth century, cannon, or rather mortars, 
were invented, and the applicability of gunpowder to purposes 
of war was understood. Edward III. employed some pieces of 
artillery with considerable effect at Crecy. But its use was 
still not very frequent ; a circumstance which will surprise us 
less when we consider the unscientific construction of artil- 
lery ; the slowness with which it could be loaded ; its stone 
balls, of uncertain aim and imperfect force, being commonly 
fired at a considerable elevation ; and especially the difficulty 
of removing it from place to place during an action. In sieges 



Italy. KINGS OF NAPLES. 211 

iind ill naval engagements, as I'ur exampl-e, in the war of Chi- 
oggia, it was more frequently em})loyed. Gradually, however, 
the new artifice of evil gained ground. The French made the 
principal improvement. They cast their cannon smaller, 
placed them on lighter carriages, and used balls of iron. They 
invented portable arms for a single soldier, which, though 
clumsy in comparison with their ])resent state, gave an augury 
of a prodigious revolution in the military art. John, duke of 
Burgundy, in 1411, had 4000 hand-cannons, as they were 
called, in his army. They are found, under different names 
and modifications of form, in most of the wars that historians 
of the fifteenth century record, but less in Italy than beyond 
the Alps. The Milanese, in 1449, are said to have armed their 
militia with 20,000 muskets, which struck terror into the old 
generals. But these muskets, supported on a rest, and charged 
with great delay, did less execution than our sanguinary 
science would require ; and, uncombined with the admirable 
invention of the bayonet, could not in any degree resist a 
charge of cavalry. The pike had a greater tendency to sub- 
vert the military system of the Middle Ages, and to demon- 
strate the efficiency of disciplined infantry. Two free nations 
had already discomfited, by the help of such infantry, those ar- 
rogant knights on whom the fate of battles had depended — 
the Bohemians, instructed in the art of war by their great 
master, John Zisca ; and the Swiss, who, after winning their 
independence inch by inch from the house of Austria, had 
lately established their renown by a splendid victory over 
Charles of Burgundy. Louis XI. took a body of mercenaries 
from the United Cantons into pay. Maximilian had recourse 
to the same assistance. And though the importance of infan- 
try was not, perhaps, decidedly established till the Milanese 
wars of Louis XII. and Francis I., in the sixteenth century, 
yet the last years of the Middle Ages, according to our 
division, indicated the commencement of that military revolu- 
tion in the general employment of pikemen and musketeers. 

§ 24. I have not alluded for some time to the domestic his- 
tory of a kingdom which bore a considerable part, during the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in the general combinations 
of Italian policy, not wishing to interrupt the reader's atten- 
tion by too frequent transitions. We must return again to a 
more remote age in order to take up the history of Naples. 
Charles of Anjou, after tlie deatlis of Manfred and Conradin 
had left him without a competitor, might be ranked in the 
first class of European sovereigns. (See p. 172.) Master of 



212 



KINGS OF NAPLES AND SICILY. Chap. III. Part II. 



Provence and Naples, and at the head of the Guelf faction in 
Italy, he had already prepared a formidable attack on tlie 

KINGS OF NAPLES OF THE HOUSE OF ANJOU. 
Charles I. of Anjou, son of Louis VJIL, king of France, and brother of 
Louis IX., king of France, becomes king of Naples and Sicily, 
A. D. 1:^65. Loses Sicily 1283, d. 1285. 

Charles II., 

m. daughter of King of Hungary, 

1285-1305. 



Charles Martel, 

king of Hungary, 

d. Iz96. 

Carobert, 

king of 
Hungary, 

d. 1342. 



Robert, 

1305-1343. 

I 



John, 
duke of Durazzo. 



Louis, 
king of 
Hungary. 



Andrew, 

m. Joanna I. 

strangled 

1345. 



Charles, 

duke of 

C.alabria, 

d. 1328. 

I 
Joanna I., 
n. Andrew of 
Hungary 
and other 
husbands, 
1343-1378. 



Charles, 
duke of 
Durazzo. 

I 

Margaret, 

m. Charles III. 

king of 

Naples. 



Louis. 

Charles III., 

king 

1382-1386, 

m. Margaret 

of Durazzo. 



Ladislaus, 

king of Naples, 

1386-1414. 



Joanna II. 
1414-1435., 



Greek empire, when a memorable revolution in Sicily brought 
humiliation on his latter years. John of I'rocida, a Neapoli- 
tan, whose patrimony had been confiscated for his adherence 
to the party of Manfred, retained, during long years of exile 

KINGS OF SICILY OF THE HOUSE OF ARAGON. 

1. Peter III. (king of Aragon), m. Constance, daughter of Conradin of Suabia 

[see p. 172], and becomes king of Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers, 

A. D. 1283, d. 1285. 



Alfonso III., 
king of Aragon. 



James II., 

king of Aragon 

and king of Sicily, 

abdicates in favor of 

Charles II., king of 

Naples, 1295. 



I 

Frederick I., 

elected king of 

Sicily, 

1296-1336. 

Peter II., 

king of Sicily, 

1336-1342. 



Louis, 

king of Sicily 

1342-1355. 



Frederick II., 

king of Sicily, 

1355-1377- 

I 

Maria, 

queen of Sicily, 

1377-1402, 

m. Martin, prince 

of Aragon. 



an implacable resentment against the house of Anjon. 
From the dominions of Peter III., king of Aragon, who had 



Italy. WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND ARAGON. 213 

bestowed estates upon liim in Valencia, he kept his eye contin- 
ually fixed on ISTaples and Sicily. The former held out no 
favorable prospects ; the Ghibelin party had been entirely sub- 
dued, and the principal barons were of French extraction or 
inclinations. But the island was in a very different state. 
Unused to any strong government, it was now treated as a 
conquered country. A large body of French soldiers garri- 
soned the fortified towns, and the systematic oppression was 
aggravated by those insults upon the honor of families which 
are most intolerable to an Italian temperament. John of 
Procida, travelling in disguise through the island, animated 
the barons with a hope of deliverance. In like disguise he 
repaired to the pope, Nicholas III., who was jealous of the new 
Neapolitan dynasty, and obtained his sanction to the projected 
insurrection ; to the Court of Constantinople, from which he 
readily obtained money ; and to the King of Aragon, who em- 
ployed that money in fitting out an armament, that hovered 
upon the coast of Africa, under pretext of attacking the 
Moors. It is, however, difficult at this time to distinguish the 
effects of preconcerted conspiracy from those of casual resent- 
ment. Before the intrigues so skilfully conducted had taken 
eifect, yet after they were ripe for development, an outrage 
committed upon a lady at Palermo, during a procession on the 
vigil of Easter, provoked the people to that terrible massacre 
of all the French in their island which has obtained the name 
of Sicilian Vespers. Unpremeditated as such an ebullition of 
popular fury must appear, it fell in, by the happiest coinci- 
dence, with the previous conspiracy. The King of Aragon's 
fleet was at hand ; the Sicilians soon called in his assistance ; 
he sailed to Palermo, and accepted the crown (a.d. 1283). 

§ 25. The long war that ensued upon this revolution in- 
volved or interested the greater part of civilized Europe. 
Philip III. of France adhered to his uncle, and the King of 
Aragon was compelled to fight for Sicily within his native 
dominions. This, indeed, was the more vulnerable point of 
attack. Upon the sea he was lord of the ascendant. His 
Catalans, the most intrepid of Mediterranean sailors, were 
led to victory by a Calabrian refugee, Roger di Loria, the 
most illustrious and successful admiral whom Europe pro- 
duced till the age of Blake and De Ruyter. In one of Loria's 
battles the eldest son of the King of Naples was made 
prisoner, and the first years of his own reign were spent in 
confinement. But notwitlistanding these advantages, it was 
found impracticable for Aragon to contend against the arms 



214 ROBERT. — JOANXA. Chap. III. Part II. 

of France, and latterly of Castile, sustained by tlie rolling 
thunders of the Vatican. Peter III. had bequeathed Sicily 
to his second son, James; Alfonso, the eldest, King of Ara- 
gon, could not fairly be expected to ruin his inheritance for 
his brotlier's cause ; nor were the barons of that free country 
disposed to carry on a war without national objects. He 
made peace, accordingly, in 1295, and engaged to withdraw 
all his subjects from the Sicilian service. Upon his own 
death, which followed very soon, James succeeded to the 
kingdom of Aragon, and ratified the renunciation of Sicily. 
But the natives of that island had received too deeply the 
spirit of independence to be thus assigned over by the letter 
of a treaty. After solemnly abjuring, by their ambassadors, 
their allegiance to the King of Aragon, they placed the crown 
upon the head of his brother, Frederick. They maintained 
the war against Charles II. of Naples, against James of Ara- 
gon, their former king, who had bound himself to enforce 
their submission, and even against the great lioger di Loria, 
who, upon some discontent with Frederick, deserted their 
banner, and entered into the Neapolitan service. Peace was 
at length made in 1300, upon condition that Frederick should 
retain during his life the kiugdom, which was afterwards to 
revert to the crown of Naples : a condition not likely to be 
fulfilled. 

Upon the death of Charles II., king of Naples, in 1305, a 
question arose as to the succession. His eldest son, Charles 
Martel, had been called by maternal inheritance to the throne 
of Hungar}^, and had left at his decease a son, Carobert, the 
reigning sovereign of that country. According to the laws of 
representative succession, which were at this time tolerably 
settled in private inheritance, the crown of Naples ought to 
have regularly devolved upon that prince. But it was con- 
tested by Ids uncle, Robert, the eldest living son of Charles II., 
and tlie cause was pleaded by civilians at Avignon before 
Pope Clement V., the feudal sujKU'ior of the Neapolitan king- 
dom. Reasons of public utility, rather than of legal analogy, 
seems to have prevailed in the decision which was made in 
favor of Robert. The course of his reign evinced the wisdom 
of this determination. Robert, a wise and active, though not 
personally a martial ]:»rince, maintained the ascendency of the 
Guelf faction, and the papal influence connected with it, 
against the formidable comlnnation of Ghibelin usurpers in 
Lombardy, and the two emperors Henry VII. and Louis of 
Bavaria. No male issue survived Robert, whose crown de- 



Italy. HOUSE OF ANJOU. 215 

scended to his granddaughter Joanna. She had been es- 
poused, while a chihl, to her cousin Andrew, son of CaroLert, 
king of Hungary, who was educated with lier in tlie court of 
Naples. Auspiciously contrived as this union might seem to 
silence a subsisting claim upon the kingdom, it proved event- 
ually the source of civil war and calamity for 150 years. 
Andrew's manners were barbarous, more worthy of his native 
country than of that polished court wherein he had been bred. 
He gave himself up to the society of Hungarians, who taught 
him to believe that a matrimonial crown and derivative 
royalty were derogatory to a prince who claimed by a para- 
mount hereditary right. In fact, he was pressing the Court 
of Avignon to permit his own coronation, which woi;ld have 
jjlaced in a very hazardous condition the rights of the queen, 
with whom he was living on ill terms, when one night he was 
seized, strangled, and thrown out of a window. Public rumor, 
in tlie absence of notorious ])roof, imputed the guilt of this 
mysterious assassination to Joanna. Whether historians are 
authorized to assume her particii)ation in it so confidently as 
they have generally done, may perhaps be doubted ; but the 
circumstances of Andrew's death were undoubtedly ])regnant 
with strong suspicion. Louis, king of Hungary, his brother, 
a just and stern prince, invaded Naples, partly as an avenger, 
partly as a conqueror. The queen and her second husband, 
Louis of Tarento, fled to Provence, where her acquittal, after 
a solemn, if not an impartial, investigation, was jn-onounced 
by Clement VI. Louis, meanwhile, found it more difficult to 
retain tlian to acquire the kingdom of Naples ; his own domin- 
ion required his presence; and Joanna soon recovered her 
crown. She reigned for thirty years more without the attack 
of any enemy, but not intermeddling, like her progenitors, in 
the general concerns of Italy. Childless by four husbands, 
the succession of Joanna began to excite ambitious specula- 
tions. Of all the male descendants of Charles I. none re- 
mained but the King of Hungary, and Cliarles, duke of 
Durazzo, who had married the queen's niece, and was regarded 
by her as the presumptive heir to the crown. But, offended 
by her marriage with Otho of Brunswick, he procured the 
assistance of a Hungarian army to invade the kingdom, and, 
getting the queen into his power, took possession of the 
throne. In this enterprise he was seconded by Urban VI., 
against whom Joanna had unfortunately declared in the great 
schism of the Church. She was smothered with a pillow, in 
jjrisoUj by the order of Charles. 



216 LADISLAUS. Chap. III. Taut IL 

§ 26. In the extremity of Joanna's distress she had sought 
assistance from a quarter too remote to aiford it in time for 
her relief. Slie ado])ted Louis, duke of Anjou, eklest uncle 
of the young king of France, Charles VI., as her heir in the 
kingdom of Naples and county of Provence. This bequest 
took eifect Avithout difficulty in the latter country. Naples 
was entirely in the possession of Charles of Durazzo. Louis, 
however, entered Italy with a very large army, consisting at 
least of 30,000 cavalry, and, according to some writers, more 
than double that number. He was joined by many Neapolitan 
barons attached to tlie late queen. But, by a fate not unusual 
in so imperfect a state of military science, their armament 
produced no adequate effect, and mouldered away through 
disease and want of provisions. Louis himself dying not long 
afterwards, the government of Charles III. appeared secure, 
and he was tempted to accept an offer of the crown of Hun- 
gary. This enterprise, equally unjust and injudicious, ter- 

TITULAR KINGS OF NAPLES OF THE SECOND HOUSE OP ANJOU. 

I.oris I., duke of Anjou, son of John, kinj^ of France, 

and uncle of Charles VI., king of France, was adopted by Joanna I. as 

kinj; of Naples, d. 1384. 

Louis IT., 

titular king of Naples, 

13S4-H17. 

\ 

Louis III., Regnier, 

titular king of Naples, titular king of Naples, 

H17-H3i. H34-14S0. 

minated in his assassination. Ladislaus, his son, a child ten 
years old, succeeded to the throne of Naples, under the 
guardianship of his mother, Margaret, whose exactions of 
money producing discontent, the party which had supported 
the late Duke of Anjou became ])owerful enough to call in his 
son. Louis 1 1., as he was called, reigned at Naples, and 
possessed most part of the kingdom, for several years ; the 
young king Ladislaus, who retained some of the northern 
provinces, fixing his residence at Gaeta. If Louis had prose- 
cuted the war with activity, it seems probable that he would 
have subdued his adversary. But his character was not very 
energetic ; and Ladislaus, as he advanced to manhood, display- 
ing much superior qualities, gained ground by degrees, till tlie 
Angevin barons, perceiving tlie turn of the tide, came over to 
his banner, and he recovered his whole dominions. 

The kingdom of Naples, at the close of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, was still altogether a feudal government. This had been 



Italy. JOANNA II. 217 

introduced by the first ISTorman kings, and the system had 
ratlier been strengthened than impaired under the Angevin 
line. The princes of the blood, who were at one time numer- 
ous, obtained extensive domains by way of appanage. Tlfe 
principality of Tarento was a large portion of the kingdom. 
The rest was occupied by some great families, whose strength, 
as well as pride, was shown in the number of men-at-arms 
whom they could muster under their banner. At the corona- 
tion of Louis II., the Sanseverini appeared with 1800 cavalry 
completely equi[)2:)ed. This illustrious house, which had filled 
all tlie high offices of state, and changed kings at its pleas- 
ure, was crushed by Ladislaus, whose bold and unrelenting 
spirit well fitted him to bruise the heads of the aristocratic 
hydra. After thoroughly establishing his government at home, 
this ambitious monarcli clirected his powerful resources towards 
foreign conquests. The ecclesiastical territories had never 
been secure from rebellion or usur[)ation; but legitimate sover- 
eigns had hitherto respected the patrimony of the head of the 
Church. It was reserved for Ladislaus, a feudal vassal of tlie 
Holy See, to seize upon Rome itself as his spoil. For several 
years, while tlie disordered state of the Church, in consequence 
of the schism and the means taken to extinguish it, gave him 
an opportunity, the King of Naples occupied great i)art of the 
])apal territories. He was disposed to have carried his arms 
farther north, and attacked the republic of Florence, if not the 
states of Lombardy, when his death relieved Italy from the 
danger of this new tyranny. 

§ 27. An elder sister, Joanna II., reigned at Naples after 
Ladislaus. Under this queen, destitute of courage and under- 
standing, and the slave of apj)etites which her age rendered 
doubly disgraceful, the kingdom relapsed into that state of an- 
archy from which its late sovereign had rescued it. She adopted 
first, as her heir and successor, Alfonso, king of Aragon and 
Sicily, but subsequently revoked her adoj)tion, and substituted 
in liis room another, Louis of Anjou, third in descent of that 
unsuccessful dynasty. Upon his death, the queen, who did 
not long survive him, settled the kingdom on his brother Reg- 
nier. The Neapolitans were generally disposed to execute this 
bequest. But Regnier was unluckily at that time a prisoner 
to the Duke of Burgundy ; and tliough his wife maintained the 
cause with great spirit, it was difficult for her, or even for 
himself, to contend against the King of Aragon, who immedi- 
ately laid claim to the kingdom. After a contest of several 
years, Regnier, having experienced the treacherous and selfish 



218 ALFONSO. CuAP. III. Tart II. 

abandonment of his friends, yielded the game to his adversary ; 
and Alfonso founded the Aragonese line of sovereigns at 
Naples, deriving pretensions more splendid than just from 
Manfred, from the house of Suabia, and from Roger Guiscard. 

§ 28. Sicily, after the reign of its deliverer, Frederick I., 
had unfortunately devolved upon weak or infant princes. The 
marriage of Maria, queeu of iSicily, with Martin, son of the 
King of Aragon, put an end to the national inde]jendence of 
her country. (See Genealogical Table, p. 212.) Dying with- 
out issue, she left the crown to her husband. This was conso- 
nant, perhai)S, to the received law of some European kingdoms. 
But, upon the death of Martin, in 1409, his father, also named 
Martin, king of Aragon, took possession as heir to his son, 
witlunit any election by the Sicilian Parliament. Thus was 
Sicily united to the crown of Aragon. Alfonso now enjoyed 
the three crowns of Aragon, Sicily, and Najjles. 

In the first year of Alfonso's Neapolitan war, he was defeated 
and taken i)risoner by a fleet of the Genoese, who, as constant 
enemies of the Catalans in all the naval warfare of the Medi- 
terranean, had willingly lent their aid to the Angevin party. 
Genoa was at this time subject to Filippo Maria, duke of Milan, 
and her royal captive was transmitted to his court. But here 
the brilliant graces of Alfonso's character won over his con- 
queror, who had no reason to consider the war as his own 
concern. The king persuaded him, on the contrary, that a 
strict alliance Avith an Aragonese dynasty in Naples against 
the pretensions of any French claimant would be the true 
policy and best security of Milan. That city, which he had 
entered as a prisoner, he left as a friend and ally. From this 
time Filippo Maria Visconti and Alfonso were firmly united in 
their Italian i)olitics and formed one weight of the balance 
whicli the republics of Venice and Florence kept in equipoise. 
Afti'r the succession of Sforza to the duchy of Milan the same 
alliance was generally preserved. Sforza had still more i)Ower- 
ful reasons than his predecessors for excluding the French 
from Italy, his own title being contested by the Duke of Or- 
leans, who derived a claim from his mother Valentine, a daugh- 
ter of (lian Galeazzo Visconti. But the two rei)ublics were no 
longer disposed towards war. Florence had sj)ent a great deal 
wdtliout any advantage in her contest with Filippo Maria; and 
the new duke of Milan had been the constant personal friend 
of Cosmo de' Medici, wdio altogether influenced that republic. 
At Venice, indeed, he had been at first regarded with very dif- 
ferent sentiments ; the Senate had prolonged their war against 



Italy. ALFONSO. 219 

Milan with redoubled animosity after his elevation, deeming 
him a not less ambitious and more formidable neighbor than 
the Visconti. But they were deceived in the character of 
Sforza. Conscious that he had reached an eminence beyond 
his early hopes, he had no care but to secure for his family the 
possession of Milan, without disturbing the balance of Lom- 
bardy. Venice had little reason to expect further conquests in 
Lombardy ; and if her ambition had inspired the hope of them, 
she was summoned by a stronger call, that of self-preservation, 
to defend her numerous and dispersed possessions in the Levant 
against the arms of Mohammed II. All Italy, indeed, felt the 
peril that impended from that side ; and these various motions 
occasioned a quadru])le league in 1455, between the King of 
ISTajjles, the Duke of Milan, and the two republics, for the })res- 
ervation of peace in Italy. One object of this alliance, and the 
prevailing object with Alfonso, was the implied guaranty of 
his succession in the kingdom of Naples to his illegitimate son 
Ferdinand. He had no lawful issue ; and there seemed no 
reason why an acquisition of his own valor should pass against 
his will to collateral heirs. The pope, as feudal superior of the 
kingdom, and the Neapolitan Parliament, the sole competent 
tribunal, confirmed the inheritance of Ferdinand. 

Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous, was by far the most 
accomplished sovereign whom the fifteenth century produced. 
The virtues of chivalry were combined in him with the patron- 
age of letters, and with more than their patronage, a real 
enthusiasm for learning, seldom found in a king, and espe- 
cially in one so active and ambitious. This devotion to litera- 
ture, was, among the Italians of that age, almost as sure a 
passport to general admiration as his most chivalrous perfec- 
tion. Magnificence in architecture and the pageantry of a 
splendid court gave fresh lustre to his reign. The Neapolitans 
perceived with grateful pride that he lived almost entirely 
among them, in preference to his patrimonial kingdom, and 
forgave the heavy taxes which faults nearly allied to his vir- 
tues, profuseness and ambition, compelled him to impose. 
But they remarked a very different character in his son. Fer- 
dinand was as dark and vindictive as his father was affable 
and generous. The barons, who had many opportunities of 
ascertaining his disposition, began immediately upon Alfonso's 
death, to cabal against his succession, turning their eyes first 
to the legitimate branch of the family, and on finding that 
prospect not favorable, to John, titular duke of Calabria, son 
of Regnier of Anjou, who survived to protest against the revo- 



220 GENOA.— FLORENCE. Chap. III. Part II. 

lution that had dethroned him. John was easily prevailed 
upon to undertake an invasion of Naples, but he underwent the 
fate that had always attended his family in their long compe- 
tition for that throne. After some brilliant successes, his 
want of resources, aggravated by the defection of Genoa, on 
Avhose ancient enmity to the house of Aragon he had relied, 
was perceived by the barons of his party, who, according to 
the jn-actice of their ancestors, returned one by one to the 
allegiance of Ferdinand. 

§ 29. Tlie peace of Italy was little disturbed, except by a 
few domestic revolutions, for several years after this Neapoli- 
tan war. Even the most short-sighted politicians were some- 
times withdrawn from selfish objects by the appalling progress 
of the Turks, though there was not energy enough in their 
councils to form any concerted plans for their own security. 
Venice maintained a long but unsuccessful contest with 
JVIohammed II. for her maritime acquisitions in Greece and 
Albania ; and it was not till after his death relieved Italy from 
its immediate terror that the ambitious republic endeavored to 
extend its territories by encroaching on the house of Este. 
Nor had Milan shown much disposition towards aggrandize- 
ment. Francesco Sforza had been succeeded — such is the 
condition of despotic governments — by his son Galeazzo, a 
tyrant more execrable than the worst of the Visconti. His 
extreme cruelties, and the insolence of a debauchery that 
gloried in the public dishonor of families, excited a few daring 
spirits to assassinate him. The Milanese profited by a tyran- 
nicide the perpetrators of which they had not courage or grati- 
tude to protect. The regency of Bonne of Savoy, mother of 
the infant duke Gian Galeazzo, deserved the praise of wisdom 
and moderation. But it was overthrown in a few years by 
Ludovico Sforza, surnamed the Moor, her husband's brother; 
who, while he i)roclaimed his nephew's majority, and affected 
to treat hira as a sovereign, hardly disguised in his conduct 
towards foreign states that he had usurped for himself the sole 
direction of government. 

The annals of one of the few surviving republics, that of 
Genoa, present to us, during the fifteenth as well as the pre- 
ceding century, an unceasing series of revolutions, the shortest 
enumeration of which would occupy several pages. The latest 
revolution within the compass of this work was in 1488, when 
the Duke of Milan became sovereign, an Adorno holding the 
office of doge as his lieutenant. 

§ 30. Florence, the most illustrious and fortunate of Italian 



Italy. RISE OF THE MEDICI. 221 

republics, was now rapidly descending from her rank among 
free commonwealths, though surrounded with more than usual 
lustre in the eyes of Europe. We must take up the story of 
that city from the revolution of lo82, which restored the 
ancient Guelf aristocracy, or party of the Albizi, to the ascen- 
dency of wldch a i)Opular insurrection had stripped tliem. 
Fifty years elapsed during which this jiarty retained the gov- 
ernment in his own hands with few attempts at disturbance. 
Their ])rincipal adversaries had been exiled, according to the 
invarial)le and jjerhaps necessary custom of a republic ; the 
populace and inferior artisans were dispirited by their ill-suc- 
cess. But, while crushing with deliberate severity their avowed 
adversaries, the ruling party had left one family whose pru- 
dence gave no reasonable excuse for persecuting them, and 
whose popularity, as well as wealth, rendered the experiment 
hazardous. The Medici were among the most considerable of 
the new or plebeian nobility. From the first years of the four- 
teenth century their name not very unfrequently occurs in the 
domestic and military annals of Florence. Throughout the 
long depression of the popular faction the house of Medici was 
always regarded as their consolation and their hope. That 
house was now represented by Giovanni, whose immense wealth, 
honorably acquired by commercial dealings, which had already 
rendered the name celebrated in Europe, was expended with 
liberality and magniticence. Of a mild temper, and averse to 
cabals, Giovanni de' Medici did not attempt to set up a party, 
and contented himself with repressing some fresh encroach- 
ments on the popular part of the constitution which the Albizi 
were disposed to make. They, in their turn, freely admitted 
him to that share in public councils to which he was entitled 
by his eminence and virtues ; a proof that the spirit of their 
administration was not illiberally exclusive. But, on the 
death of Giovanni, his son Cosmo de' Medici, inheriting his 
father's riches and estimation, with more talents and more 
ambition, thought it time to avail himself of the popularity 
belonging to his name. By extensive connections with the 
most eminent men in Italy, especially with Sforza, he came to 
be considered as the tirst citizen of Florence. The oligarchy 
were more than ever unpopular. Their administration since 
1382 had indeed been in general eminently successful; the 
acquisition of Pisa and of other Tuscan cities had aggrandized 
the republic, while from the port of Leghorn her ships had 
begun to trade with Alexandria, and sometimes to contend 
with the Genoese. But an unprosperous war with Lucca 



222 LORENZO DE' MEDICI. Chap. III. Part II. 

diminished a reputation which was never siistained by public 
affection. Cosmo and his friends aggravated the errors of the 
government, which, liaving lost its wise and temperate leader, 
Nicola di Uzzano, had fallen into the rasher hands of Einaldo 
degl' Albizi. He incurred the blame of being the first aggres- 
sor in a struggle which had become inevitable. Cosmo was 
arrested by command of a gonfalonier devoted to the Albizi, and 
condemned to banishment (a.d. 1433). But the oligarchy had 
done too much or too little. The city was full of his friends ; 
the lionors conferred upon him in his exile attested the senti- 
ments of Italy. Next year he was recalled in triumph to 
Florence, and the Albizi were completely overthrown. 

It is vain to expect that a victorious faction will scruple to 
retaliate u[)on its enemies a still greater measure of injustice 
than it ex})erienced at their hands. The Albizi had in general 
respected the legal forms of their free republic, which good 
citizens, and perha])S themselves, might hope one day to see 
more effective. Tlie Medici made all their government con- 
ducive to hereditary monarchy. A multitude of noble citizens 
were driven from their country ; some were even put to death. 
A balia* was appointed for ten years to exclude all the Albizi 
from magistracy, and for the sake of this security to the rul- 
ing faction, to supersede the legitimate institutions of the 
republic. Aftm- the expiration of tliis period, the dictatorial 
])o\ver was renewed on |)retence of fresh danger, and this was 
rejieated constantly. Cosmo died at an advanced age, in 14G4. 
His son, Piero de' Medici, though not deficient either in virtues 
or abilities, seemed too infirm in health for the administration 
of public affairs. A strong opposition was raised to the family 
]n'('tensions of tlie Medici. Like all Florentine factions, it 
trusted to violence ; and the cluxnce of arms was not in its 
favor. From this revolution in 14r)6, when some of the most 
considerable citizens were banished, we may date an acknowl- 
edged supremacy in the house of Medici, the chief of which 
nominated the regular magistrates, and drew to himself the 
whole conduct of the republic. 

§ 31. The two sons of Piero, Lorenzo and Julian, especially 
the former, though young at their father's death, assumed, 
by the request of their friends, the reins of government (a.d. 
1469). It was impossible that, among a people who had so 
many rect)llections toattacli to the name of liberty, among 

* A baiin was a temporary delegation of sovereignty to a number, ironerally a con- 
siderable number of citizens, who during the period of tlieir dictalorsliip named tlie 
magistrates, iustcud of drawing- tliero by lot, and banislied suspected individuals. 



Italy. LORENZO DE' MEDICI. 223 

so many citizens whom their ancient constitution invited to 
public trust, the control of a single family should, excite no 
dissatisfaction. But, if the people's wish to resign their 
freedom gives a title to accept the government of a country, 
the Medici were no usurpers. That family never lost the 
aifections of the populace. The cry of Falle, Palle (their ar- 
morial distinction), would at any time rouse the Florentines 
to defend the chosen patrons of the republic. If their sub- 
stantial influence could before be questioned, the conspiracy 
of the Pazzi, wherein Julian perished, excited an enthusiasm 
for the surviving brother that never ceased during his life. 
Nor was this any thing unnatural, or any severe reproach 
to Florence. All around, in Lombardy and Eomagna, the 
lamp of liberty had long since been extinguished in blood. 
The freedom of Sienna and Genoa was dearly purchased hy 
revolutionary proscriptions ; that of Venice was only a name. 
The repul)lic Avhich liad jjreserved longest, and with greatest 
purity, that vestal fire, had at least no relative degradation to 
fear in surrendering herself to Lorenzo de' Medici. I need not 
in this place expatiate upon what the name instantly suggests 
— the patronage of science and art, and the constellation of 
scholars and poets, of architects and painters, whose reflected 
beams cast their radiance around his head. His political rep- 
utation, though far less durable, was in his own age as conspic- 
uous as that which he acquired in the history of letters. 
Equally active and sagacious, he held his way through the 
varying combinations of Italian policy, always with credit, and 
generally with success. Florence, if not enriched, was, upon 
the whole, aggrandized during his administration, which was 
exposed to some severe storms from the unscrupulous adversa- 
ries, Sixtus IV. and Ferdinand of Is^aples, whom he was com- 
pelled to resist. As a patriot, indeed, we never can bestow 
upon Lorenzo de' Medici the meed of disinterested virtue. He 
completed that subversion of the Florentine republic which his 
two immediate ancestors had so well prepared. The two coun- 
cils, her regular legislature, he superseded by a permanent 
Senate of seventy persons ; while the gonfalonier and priors, 
become a mockery and pageant to keep up the illusion of lib- 
erty, were taught that in exercising a legitimate authority 
without the sanction of their prince — a name now first heard 
at Florence — they incurred the risk of punishment for their 
audacity. Even the total dilapidation of his commercial 
wealth was repaired at the cost of the state ; and tlie republic 
disgracefully screened the bankruptcy of the Medici by her 



224 FRANCE LAYS CLAIM TO NAPLES. Ch. IIL Part IL 

own. But, compared with the statesmen of his age, we can 
reproach Lorenzo with no heinous crime. He had many ene- 
mies ; his descendants had many more ; but no unequivocal 
charge of treachery or assassination has been substantiated 
against his memory. So much was Lorenzo esteemed by his 
contemporaries, that his premature death lias frequently been 
considered as the cause of those unhappy revolutions tliat 
speedily ensued, and which his foresight would, it is imagined, 
have -been able to prevent ; an opinion which, whether founded 
in probability or otherwise, attests the common sentiment 
about his character (a.d. 1492). 

§ 32. If, indeed, Lorenzo de' Medici could not have changed 
the destinies of Italy, however premature his death may ap- 
pear if we consider the ordinary duration of human exist- 
ence, it must be admitted that for his own welfare, perhaps 
for his glory, he had lived out the full measure of his time. 
An age of new and uncommon revolutions was about to 
arise, among the earliest of which the temporary downfall 
of his family was to be reckoned. The long-contested suc- 
cession of Naples was again to involve Italy in war. The 
ambition of strangers was once more to desolate her plains. 
Ferdinand, king of Naples, had reigned for thirty years after 
the discomfiture of his competitor with success and ability, 
but with a degree of ill faith as well as tyranny towards his 
subjects that rendered his government deservedly odious. His 
son Alfonso, whose succession seemed now near at hand, was 
still more marked by these vices than himself. Meanwhile, 
the pretensions of the house of Anjou had legally descended, 
after the death of old Regnier, to Regnier, duke of Lorraine, 
his grandson by a daughter ; whose marriage into the house of 
Lorraine had, however, so displeased her father, that he be- 
queathed his Neapolitan title, along with his real patrimony, 
the county of I'rovence, to a count of Maine ; by whose testa- 
ment they became vested in the crown of France. Louis XL, 
while he took possession of Provence, gave himself no trouble 
about Naples. But Charles VIII., inheriting liis father's am- 
bition witliout that cool sagacity which restrained it in general 
from impractible attempts, and far better circumstanced at 
home than Louis had ever been, was ripe for an expedition to 
vindicate his pretension upon Naples, or even for more exten- 
sive projects. It was now two centuries since the kings of 
France had begun to aim, by intervals, at conquests in Italy. 
The long English wars changed all views of the court of 
France to self-defence. But in the fifteenth century its plans 



Italy. 



NOTE TO CnAPTER III. 



225 



of aggrandizement beyond the Alps began to revive. Several 
times, as I have mentioned, the republic of Genoa put itself 
under the dominion of France. The dukes of Savoy, possess- 
ing most part of Piedmont, and masters of the mountain-passes, 
were, by birth, intermarriage, and habitual policy, completely 
dedicated to the French interests. Ludovico Sforza, who had 
usurped the guardianship of his nephew, the Duke of Milan, 
found, as that young man advanced to maturity, that one 
crime required to be completed by another. To depose and 
murder his ward was, however, a scheme that prudence, 
though not conscience, bade him hesitate to execute. He had 
rendered Ferdinand of Naples and Piero de' Medici, Lorenzo's 
heir, his decided enemies. A revolution at Milan would be 
the probable result of his continuing in usurpation. In these 
circumstances Ludovico Sforza excited the King of France to 
undertake the conquest of Naples (a.d. 14.3*.)). But in reliev- 
ing liimself from an immediate danger, Ludovico Sforza over- 
looked the consideration that the presumptive heir of the King 
of France claimed by an ancient title that principality ^of Milan 
which he was compassing by usurpation and murder. But 
neither Milan nor Naples was free from other claimants than 
France, nor was she reserved to enjoy unmolested tlie spoil of 
Italy. A louder and a louder strain of warlike dissonance 
will be heard from the banks of the Danube, and from the 
Mediterranean Gulf. The dark and wily Ferdinand, the rash 
and lively Maximilian, are preparing to hasten into the lists; 
the schemes of ambition are assuming a more comprehensive 
aspect; and the controversy of Neapolitan succession is to ex- 
])and into the long rivalry between the houses of France and 
Austria. But here, while Italy is still untouched, and before 
as yet the first lances of France gleam along the defiles of the 
Alps, we close the history of the Middle Ages. 



NOTE TO CHAPTER IIL 



AUTHORITIES FOR ITALIAN HISTORY. 

The authorities upon which the preced 
ing chapter is founded are cliietly tlie 
following: 1. Muratori's Annals of Italy 
(twelve volumes in 4to, or eighteen in 
8vo) comprehend a summary of its history 
from the beginning of the ('hristian era 
to the peace of AixIaCliapelle. The 
volumes relating to the Middle Ages, into 
wiiicli lie has digested the original writers 
contained in his great collection, " Scrip 



tores Rerum Italicarum," are by much '.he 
best; and of these, the i>art which exUnids 
from the seventh or eighth to the cud of 
the twelfth century is the fulh-st and most 
useful. Muratori's accuracy is in general 
almost implicitly to be trusted, and his 
plain integrity speaks in all his writings; 
but his mind was not iihilosophical enough 
to diseiiiiiinale the wheat from the chaff, 
and his halntsof life induced him to annex 
an imaginary importance to the dates of 
diplomas and other inconsiderable mat- 



226 



NOTE TO CHAPTER III. 



ters. His narrative presents a mere skel- 
eton, devoid of juices; and besides its in- 
tolerable aridity, it labors under tliat con- 
fusion which a merely chronological ar- 
rangement of concurrent and independent 
events must always produce. 2. The IJis- 
scrtations on Italian Antiquities, by the 
same writer, may be considered either as 
one or two works. In Latin they form six 
volumes in folio, enriched with a great 
number of original documents. In Italian 
tliey are freely translated by Muratori 
himself, abridged, no doubt, and without 
most of the original instruments, but well 
fiunislied with quotations, and abundant- 
ly sutliciint lor most purposes. They form 
three voliiiiics in quarto. .3. St. Marc, a 
learned and laborious Frenchman, has 
written a chronological abridgment of 
Italian history, somewhat in the manner 
of Henault, but so strangely divided by 
several parallel columns in every page, 
that I could hardly name a book more in- 
convenient to the reader. His knowledge, 
like Muratori's, lay a good deal in jioints 
of minute inquiry; and he is chiefly to be 
valued in ecclesiastical history. The work 
descends only to the thirteenth centurj;. 
4. Denina'fi " Kivoluzioni d' Italia," ori- 
ginally published in 1701), is a perspicuous 
and lively book, in which the princi[)al 
circumstances are well selected. It is not, 
perhaps, free from errors in fact, and still 
less from those of opinion; but, till lately, 
I do not know from what source a general 
ac(|uaintance with the history of Italy 
could have been so easily derived. 5. The 
publication of M. Sismondi's " Historic 
des Kepubliques Italiennes" has thrown 
a blaze of light around the most interest- 
ing, at least, in many respects, of Euro- 
pean countries during the Middle Ages. I 



am happy to bear witness, so far as my 
own studies have enabled me, to the learn- 
ing and diligence of this writer, qualities 
which the world is sometimes apt not to 
suppose where they perceive so much elo- 
quence and philosophy. I cannot express 
my opinion of M. Sismondi in this respect 
more strongly than by saying that his 
work has almost superseded the Annals 
of Muratori; I mean from the twelfth 
century, before which period his labor 
hardly begins. Though doubtless not 
more accurate than Muratori, he has con- 
sulted a much more extensive list of 
authors ; and, considered as a register of 
facts alone, his history is incomparably 
more useful. These are combined in so 
skilful a manner as to diminish, in a great 
degree, that inevitable confusion which 
arises from frequency of transition and 
want of general unity. It is much to be 
regretted that, from too redundant details 
of unnecessary circumstances, and some- 
times, if I may take the liberty of saying 
so, from unnecessary reflections, M. Sis- 
mondi has run into a proli.\ity which will 
probably intimidate the languid students 
of our age. It is the more to be regretted, 
because the History of Italian Uepublics 
is calculated to produce a good far more 
important than storing the memory with 
historical facts — that of communicating 
to the reader's bosom some sparks of the 
dignified philosophy, the love for truth 
and virtue, which lives along its eloquent 
pages. 6. To Muratori's collection of 
original writers, the " Scriptores Rerum 
Italicarum," in twenty-four volumes in 
folio, I have paid considerable attention; 
perhajis there is no volume of it which I 
have not more or less consulted. 



Spain. HISTORY OF SPAIN. 227 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HISTORY OF SPAIN TO THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA. 

§ 1. Kinjidom of thp Visigotlis. § 2. Conquest of Spain by the Moors. G r ad u.il Re- 
vival of the S]iaiiisli nation. § .3. Kingdoms of Leon, Aragon, Navarre, and Cas- 
tile, successively foniuMl. § 4.' Chartered Towns of Castile. § 5. Military Orders. 
§ 6. Conquests of Ferdinand III. and James of Aragon. § 7." Causes of the Delay 
in expelling the Moors. §8. History of Castile continued. Character of the Gov- 
ernment. Peter the Cruel. § <J. House of Trastamare. John II. Henry IV. § 10. 
Constitution of Castile. National Assemblies or Cortes. Their constituent Parts. 
§ 11. Right of Taxation. § 1'.^. Forms of the Cortes. § 13. Legislation. § 14. 
Other Rights of the Cortes. § 15. Privy Council of Castile. § 16. Administration 
of .Justice. § 17. Imperfections of tlie Constitution. § 18. Aragon. Its history 
in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. Disputed Succession. § 19. Constitu- 
tion of Aragon. § 20. Free Spirit of its Aristocracy. Privilege of Union. § 21. 
Powers of the Justiza. Legal Securities. Illustr.ations. § 22. Other Constitu- 
tional Laws. Cortes of Aragon. § 23. Valencia and Catalonia. § 24. Union of 
two Crowns by the Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. § 25. Conquest of 
Granada. 

§ 1. The history of Spain during the Middle Ages ought 
to commence with the dynasty of the Visigoths — a nation 
among the first that assaulted and overthrew the Roman 
Empire, and whose estahlishment preceded by nearly half a 
century the invasion of Clovis. Vanquished by that con- 
queror in the battle of I*oitiers, the Gothic monarchs lost 
their extensive dominions in Gaul, and transferred their resi- 
dence from Toulouse to Toledo. The Visigothic monarchy 
differed in several respects from that of the Franks during 
the same period. The crown was less hereditary, or at least 
the regular succession was more frequently disturbed. The 
prelates had a still more commanding influence in temporal 
government. The distinction of Romans and barliarians was 
less marked, the laws more uniform, and approaching nearly 
to the imperial code. The power of the sovereign was per- 
haps more limited by an aristocratical council than in France, 
but it never yielded to the dangerous influence of mayors of 
the palace. Civil wars and disputed successions were very 
frequent, but the integrity of the kingdom was not'violated by 
the custom of partition. 

§ 2. Spain, after remaining for nearly three centuries in 
the possession of the Visigoths, fell under the yoke of the 
Saracens in 712. The fervid and irresistible enthusiasm 



228 CONQUEST BY THE SARACENS. Chap. IV. 

wliieh distinguished the youthful period of Mohammedanism 
might sufficiently account for this conquest, even if we could 
not assign additional causes — the factions which divided the 
Goths, the resentment of disapi)ointed pretenders to the 
throne, the provocations, as has been generally believed, of 
Count Julian,^ and the temerity that risked the fate of an 
empire on the chances of a single battle. It is more surpris- 
ing that a remnant of this ancient monarchy should not only 
have preserved its national liberty and name in the northern 
mountains, but waged for some centuries a successful, and 
generally an offensive warfare against the conquerors, till the 
balance was completely turned in its favor, and the Moors 
were compelled to maintain almost as obstinate and protracted 
a contest for a small portion of the peninsula. But the Ara- 
bian monarchs of Cordova found in their success and imagined 
security a pretext for indolence : even in the cultivation of 
science and contemjdation of the magnificent architecture of 
their mosques and palaces they forgot their poor but daring 
enemies in the Asturias; while, according to the nature of 
despotism, the fruits of wisdom or bravery in one generation 
wer(! lost in the follies and effeminacy of the next. Their 
kingdom was dismemljered by successful rebels, who formed 
the states of Toledo, Huesca, Saragossa, and others less emi- 
nent ; and tliese in their own mutual contests, not only relaxed 
tlieir natural enmity towards the Christian princes, but some- 
times sought their alliance. 

§ 3. The last attack which seemed to endanger the reviving 
monarchy of Spain was that of Almanzor, the illustrious vizier 
of Haccham 11. , towards the end of the tenth century, wherein 
the city of Leon, and even the shrine of Compostella, were 
burned to the ground. For some ages before this transient 
reflux, gradual encroachments had been made upon the Sara- 

1 Tlie story of Cava, daughter of Count .Tiilian, whose seduction by llodcric, the 
last (iothic kiiiff, iitipelletl her fatliir to iiivilt; the Moors into Spain, enters lar^i'ly 
Into tlie cycle of Castiliaii romance and into the srave narratives of every liistorian 
II cannot, however, be traced in extant \vritlii}»s liiglier than the eleventli century, 
wlien it appears in tlie (Chronicle of the .Monk of Silos. The most critical investi- 
gators of history, therefore, have treated the story as too apocryphal to l)e stated as 
a fact (jayangos (" llistorv of tli<' Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain") points ont 
that tile account of .Julian, in the" Chronicon Silense," is borrowed from some Ara- 
bian anthority; and this he jiroves bv several writers from the ninth century down 
ward, " all of whom mention, more or less explicitly, the existence of a man living 
in Africa, and .named Uyan, wlio helped the Arabs to ni;ike a conquest of Spain; to 
wiiich I ought to add that the rajie of Ilynn's daughter, and the circumstances at- 
tending it, may also be read in detail in "the Mohammedan authors who preceded 
the monk of Silos." The result of this learned writer's investigation is that Uyan 
really existed, that he was a Christian cliief, settled, not in Spain, but on the African 
coast, and that lie betrayed, not. Iiis country (except, indeed, as be was probably of 
Spanish descent), but the interests of Ins religion, by assisting tlie Saracens to sub- 
jugate the Gotliic kingdom. 



Spain. 



CASTILE. 229 



cens, and the kingdom originally styled of Oviedo, the seat of 
which was removed to Leon in 914, had extended its boundary 
to the Douro, and even to the mountainous chain of the Gua- 
darrama. The province of Old Castile, thus denominated, as is 
generally supposed, from the castles erected while it remained 
a march or frontier against the Moors, was governed by hered- 
itary counts, elected originally by the provincial aristocracy, 
and virtually independent, it seems probable, of the kings of 
Leon, though commonly serving them in war as brethren of 
the same faith and nation. 

While the kings of Leon were thus occupied in recovering 
the western provinces, another race of Christian princes grew 
up silently under the shadow of the Pyrenean mountains. 
Nothing can be more obscure than the beginnings of those little 
states which were formed in Navarre and the country of So- 
prarbe. They might, perhaps, be almost contemporaneous with 
the Moorish conquests. On both sides of the Pyrenees dwelt 
an aboriginal people, the last to undergo the yoke, and who 
had never acquired the language, of Rome. We know little of 
these intrepid mountaineers in the dark period which elapsed 
under tlie Gothic and Prank dynasties, till we find them cutting 
off the rear-guard of Charlemagne in Roncesvalles, and main- 
taining at least their indei)endence, though seldom, like the 
kings of Asturias, waging offensive war against the Saracens. 
The town of Jaca, situated among long narrow valleys that 
intersect the southern ridges of the Pyrenees, was the ca])ital 
of a little free state, which afterwards expanded into the mon- 
archy of Aragon.^ A territory rather more extensive belonged 
to Navarre, the kings of which fixed their seat at Pampelona. 
lUscay seems to have been divided between this kingdom and 
that of Leon. The connection of Aragon or Soprarbe and 
Navarre was very intimate, and they were often united iind(>r 
a single chief. 

At the beginning of the eleventh century, Sancho the Great, 
king of Navarre and Aragon, was enabled to render his second 
son Ferdinand count, or, as he assumed the title, king of Castile. 
This effectually dismembered that province from the kingdom 
of Leon; but their union soon became more com})lete than 
ever, though with a reversed supremacy. Permudo TIL, king 
of Leon, fell in an engagement with the new king of Castile, 
who had married his sister ; and Ferdinand, in her right, or in 

2 The Fueros, or written laws of.Jae.i, were perliaps more ancient than any local 
customary in Europe. Alfonso III. conlirnis tlicm by name of " tlic, ancient usages 
of .laca." They prescribe the descent of lands and movables, as well as the election 
of municipal magistrates. 



230 MODE OF SETTLING CONQUESTS. Chap. IV. 

that of conquest, became master of the united monarchy. This 
cessation of hostilities between the Christian states enabled 
them to direct a more unremitting energy against their ancient 
enemies, who were now sensibly weakened by the various 
causes of decline to which I have already alluded. During 
the eleventh century the Spaniards were almost always supe- 
rior in the field : the towns which they began by pillaging, 
they gradually possessed ; their valor was heightened by the 
customs of chivalry, and inspired by the example of the Cid ; 
and before the end of this age Alfonso VI. recovered the 
ancient metropolis of the monarchy, the city of Toledo. This 
was the severest blow which the Moors had endured, and an 
unequivocal symptom of that change in their relative strength, 
which, from being so gradual, was the more irretrievable. 
Calamities scarcely inferior fell upon them in a different quar- 
ter. The kings of Aragon (a title belonging originally to a 
little district upon the river of that name) had been cooped up 
almost in the mountains by the small Moorish states north 
of the Ebro, especially that of Huesca. About the middle of 
the eleventh century, they began to attack their neighbors 
with success ; the Moors lost one town after anotlier, till, in 
111(S, exposed and weakened by the reduction of all these 
places, the city of Saragossa, in which a line of Mohammedan 
])rinces had flourished for several ages, became the prize of 
Alfonso I. and the capital of his kingdom. The southern 
parts of what is now the province of Aragon were suc- 
cessively reduced during the twelfth century; while all 
New Castile and Estremadura became annexed in the same 
gradual manner to the dominion of the descendants of Al- 
fonso VI. 

Although the feudal system cannot be said to have obtained 
in the kingdoms of Leon and Castile, their peculiar situation 
gave the aristocracy a great deal of the same power and inde- 
])endence which resulted in France and Germany from that 
institution. The territory successively recovered from the 
Moors, like waste lands reclaimed, could have no projirietor 
but the conquerors, and the prospect of such acquisitions was a 
constant incitement to the nobility of Spain, especially to 
those who had settled themselves on the Castilian frontier. 
Ill their new conquests they Imilt towns, and invited Christian 
settlers, the Saracen inhabitants being commonly expelled, or 
voluntarily retreating to the safer provinces of the south. 
Thus Burgos was settled by a count of Castile about <S80 ; 
another fixed his seat at Osma ; a third at Sei)ulveda; a fourth 



Spain. CIIARTEllED TOWNS. 231 

at Salamanca. Tliese cities were not free from incessant peril 
of a sudden attack till tlie union of the two kingdoms under 
Ferdinand 1., and consequently of the necessity of keeping in 
exercise a numerous and armed population gave a character of 
personal freedom and ^jrivilege to the inferior classes which 
they hardly possessed at so early a period in any other mon- 
archy. Villenage seems never to have been established in the 
Hispano-Gothic kingdoms, Leon and Castile ; though I confess 
it was far from being unknown in that of Aragon, which had 
formed its institutions on a different pattern. Since nothing 
makes us forget the arbitrary distinctions of rank so much as 
partici[)ation in any common calamity, every man who had 
escaped the great shipwreck of liberty and religion in the 
mountains of Astui'ias was invested with a personal dignity, 
which gave him value in his own eyes and those of his coun- 
try. It is probably this sentiment transmitted to posterity, 
and gradually fixing the national cliaracter, that has i)roduced 
tlie elevation of manner remarked by travellers in the Castilian 
peasant. But while these acquisitions of the nobility promoted 
the grand object of winning back the peninsula from its in- 
vaders, they by no means invigorated the government or 
tended to domestic tranquillity. 

§ 4. A more interesting inethod of securing the public de- 
fence was by the institution of chartered towns or commu- 
nities. These were established at an earlier period than in 
France and England, and were, in some degree, of a peculiar 
description. Instead of purchasing their immunities, and al- 
most their personal freedom, at the hands of a master, the 
burgesses of Castilian towns were invested with civil rights 
and extensive property on the more liberal condition of pro- 
tecting their country. The fuero, or original charter of a 
Si)anish community, was properly a compact, by which the 
king or lord granted a town and adjacent district to the bur- 
gesses, with various privileges, and especially tliat of choosing 
magistrates and a common council, who were bound to con- 
form themselves to the laws prescribed by the founder. 
These laws, civil as well as crinunal, though essentially de- 
rived from the ancient code of the Visigoths, which contin- 
ued to be the common law of Castile till the fourteenth or 
fifteenth century, varied from each other in })articular usages, 
which had probably grown up and been established in these 
districts before their legal confirmation. The territory held 
by chartered towns was frequently very extensive, far be- 
yond any comparison with corporations in our own country 



232 MILITARY ORDERS. Chap. IV. 

or in France ; including the estates of private land-holders, 
subject to the jurisdiction and control of the municipality as 
well as its inalienable demesnes, allotted to the maintenance 
of the magistrates and other public expenses. In every 
town the king appointed a governor to receive the usual 
tributes, and watch over the police and the fortified places 
within the district ; but the administration of justice was 
exclusively reserved to the inhabitants and their elected 
judges. Even the executive power of the royal officer was 
regarded with jealousy ; he was forbidden to use violence 
towards any one without legal process ; and by the f uero of 
Logroiio, if he attempted to enter forcibly into a private house 
he might be killed with impunity. 

In recomijense for such liberal concessions, the incorporated 
towns were bound to certain money payments and to military 
service. This was absolutely due from every inhabitant, with- 
out dispensation or substitution, unless in case of intirmity. 
TliQ royal governor and the magistrates, as in the simple times 
of primitive Rome, raised and commanded the militia. Every 
man of a certain property was bound to serve on horseback, 
and was exempted in return from the payment of taxes. This 
produced a distinction between the caballeros, or noble class, 
and the jpecheros, or payers of tribute. But the distinction 
appears to have been founded only upon wealth, as in the 
Roman equites, and not upon hereditary rank, though it most 
likely prepared the way for the latter. The horses of these 
caballeros could not be seized for debt; in some cases they 
were exclusively eligible to magistracy; and their honor was 
})rotected by laws wdiich rendered it highly penal to insult or 
molest them. But the civil rights of rich and poor in courts 
of justice were as equal as in England. 

§ 5. The progress of the Christian arms in Spain may in part 
be ascribed to another remarkable feature in the constitution 
of that country, the military orders. These had already been 
tried with signal effect in Palestine ; a,nd the similar circum- 
stances of Spain easily led to an adoption of the same policy. 
In a very few years after the first institution of the Knights 
Tem])lars, they were endowed with great estates, or rather 
districts, won from the Moors, on condition of defending their 
own and the national territory. These lay chiefly in the parts 
of Aragon beyond the Ebro, the conquest of which was then 
recent and insecure. So extraordinary was the respect for this 
order and that of St. John, and so powerful the conviction 
that the hope of Christendom rested upon their valor, that 



Spain. EXPULSION OF THE MOORS. 233 

Alfonso the First, king of Aragon, dying cliildless, bequeathed 
to them his whole kingdou]. The states of Aragon annulled, 
as may be supposed, this strange testament ; but the successor 
of Alfonso was obliged to pacify the ambitious knights by im- 
mense concessions of money and territory ; stipulating even 
not to make peace with the Moors against their will. In 
imitation of these great military orders common to all Chris- 
tendom, there arose three Spanish institutions of a similar 
kind, the orders of Calatrava, Santiago, and Alcantara. The 
first of these was established in 1158 ; the second and most 
famous had its charter from the pope in 1175, though it seems 
to have existed previously ; the third branched off from that of 
Calatrava at a subsequent time. These were military colleges, 
having their walled towns in different parts of Castile, and 
governed by an elective grand master, whose influence in the 
state was at least equal to that of any of the nobility. In 
the civil dissensions of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the 
chiefs of these incorporated knights were often very promi- 
nent. 

§ G. The kingdoms of Leon and Castile were unwisely di- 
vided anew by Alfonso VII. between his sons Sancho and 
Ferdinand, and this produced not only a separation but a re- 
vival of the ancient jealousy with frequent wars for near a 
century. At length, in 1238, Ferdinand III., king of Castile, 
reunited forever the two branches of the Gothic monarchy. 
He employed their joint strength against the Moors, whose 
dominion, though it still embraced the finest provinces of the 
peninsula, was sinking by internal weakness, and had never 
recovered a tremendous defeat at Baiios di Toloso, a few miles 
from Baylen, in 1210. Ferdinand, bursting into Andalusia, 
took its great capital, the city of Cordova, not less ennobled 
by the cultivation of Arabian science, and by the names of 
Avicenna and Averroes than by the splendid works of a rich 
and munificent dynasty, (a.d. 1236.) In a few years more 
Siiville was added to his conquests, and the Moors lost their 
favorite regions on the banks of the Guadalquivir. James I. 
of Aragon, the victories of whose long reign gave him the 
surname of Conqueror, reduced the city and kingdom of Va- 
lencia, the Balearic isles, and the kingdom of Murcia ; but 
the last was annexed, according to compact, to the crown of 
Castile. 

§ 7. It could hardly have been expected about the middle 
of the thirteenth century, when the splendid conquests of 
Ferdinand and James had planted the Christian banner on the 



234 EXPULSION OF THE MOORS. Chap. IV. 

three principal Moorish cities, that 250 years were yet to elapse 
before the rescue of Spain from their yoke should be com- 
pleted. Ambition, religious zeal, national enmity, could not 
be supposed to pause in a career which now seemed to be ob- 
structed by such moderate difficulties ; yet we find, on the con- 
trary, the exertions of the Spaniards begin from this time to 
relax, and their acquisitions of territory to become more slow. 
One of the causes, undoubtedly, that produced this unexpected 
protraction of the contest was the superior means of resistance 
which the Moors found in retreating. Their population, spread 
originally over the whole of Spain, was now condensed, and, 
if i may so say, become no further compressible, in a single 
province. It had been mingled, in the northern and central 
parts, with the Mozarabic Christians, their subjects and tribu- 
taries, not perhaps treated with much injustice, yet naturally 
and irremediably their enendes.. Toledo and Saragossa, when 
tliey fell under a Cliristiau sovereign, were full of these in- 
ferior Christians, whose long intercourse with their masters 
has infused the tones and dialect of Arabia into the language 
of Castile. But in the twelfth century the Moors, exasperated 
by defeat and jealous of secret disaffection, began to persecute 
their Christian subjects, till they renounced or fled for their 
religion ; so that in the southern provinces scarcely any pro- 
fessors of Christianity were left at the time of Ferdinand's in- 
vasion. An equally severe policy was adopted on the other 
side. The Moors had been permitted to dwell in Saragossa as 
the Christians had dwelt before, subjects, not slaves ; but on 
the capture of Seville tliey were entirely expelled, and new 
settlers invited from every part of Spain. The strong fortitied 
towns of Andalusia, such as Gibraltar, Algesiras, Tarifa, 
maintained also a more formidable resistance than had been 
experienced in Castile ; they cost tedious sieges, were some- 
times recovered by the enemy, and were always liable to his 
attacks. But the great protection of the Spanish Mohamme- 
dans was found in the alliance and ready aid of their kindred 
beyond the Straits. Accustomed to hear of the African Moors 
only as pirates, we cannot easily conceive the powerful dy- 
nasties, the warlike chiefs, the vast armies, which for seven or 
eight centuries illustrate the annals of that people. Their 
assistance was always afforded to the true believers in Spain, 
though their ambition was generally dreaded by those who 
stood in need of their valor. 

Probably, however, the kings of Granada were most in- 
debted to the indolence which gradually became characteristic 



Spain. EXPULSION OF THE MOOES. 235 

of their enemies. By the cession of Murcia to Castile, the 
kingdom of Aragon shut itself out from the possibility of ex- 
tending those conquests which had ennobled her earlier 
sovereigns ; and their successors, not less ambitious and enter- 
prising, diverted their attention towards objects beyond the 
peninsula. The Castilian, patient and undesponding in bad 
success, loses his energy as the pressure becomes less heavy, 
and puts no ordinary evil in comparison with the exertions by 
which it must be removed. The greater part of his country 
freed by his arms, he was content to leave the enemy in a 
single province rather than undergo the labor of making his 
trium})h complete. 

§ 8. If a similar spirit of insubordination had not been found 
com])atible in earlier ages with the aggrandizement of the 
Castilian monarchy (a.d. 1252), we might ascribe its want of 
splendid successes against the Moors to the continued rebel- 
lions which disturbed that Government for more than a 
century after the death of Ferdinand III. His son Alfonso 
X. might justly acquire the surname of Wise for his general 
})rohciency in learning, and especially in astronomical science, 
if these attainments deserve praise in a king who was inca}>a- 
ble of preserving his subjects in their duty. As a legislator, 
Alfonso, by his code of the Siete Partidas, sacrificed the 
ecclesiastical rights of his crown to the usurpation of Rome ; 
and his philosophy sunk below the level of ordinary })ru(l(^nce 
when he permitted the phantom of an imperial crown in Ger- 
many to seduce his hopes for almost twenty years. For the 
sake of such an illusion he would even have withdrawn him- 
self from Castile, if the states had not remonstrated against an 
exijedition that would i)roba.bly have cost him the kingdom. 
In the latter years of his turbulent reign, Alfonso had to 
contend against his son. The right of representation was 
hitherto unknown in Castile, which had borrowed little from 
the customs of feudal nations. By the received law of suc- 
cession the nearer was always preferred to the m^re remote, 
the son to the grandson. Alfonso X. had established the 
different maxim of representation by his code of the Siete 
Fartidas, the authority of which, however, was not universally 
acknowledged. The question soon came to an issue ; on the 
death of his eldest son, Ferdinand, leaving two male children, 
8ancho, their uncle, asserted his claim, founded upon the 
ancient Castilian right of succession ; and this chiefly, no 
doubt, through fear of arms, though it did not want plausible 
arguments, was ratified by an assembly of the cortes, and 



236 CIVIL DISTUEBANCES OF CASTILE. Cuap. IV. 

secured, notwitlistanding the king's reluctance, by the courage 
of Sancho. But the descendants of Ferdinand, generally 
called the infants of la Cerda, by the protection of France, to 
whose royal family they were closely allied, and of Aragon, 
always prompt to interfere in the disputes of a rival people, 
continvied to assert their pretensions for more than half a 
century, and, though they were not very successful, did not 
fail to aggravate the troubles of their country. 

The annals of Sancho IV. (a.d. 1284), and his two immedi- 
ate successors, Ferdinand IV. (a.d. 1295) and Alfonso XI. 
(a.d. 1132), present a series of unhappy and dishonorable 
civil dissensions with too much rapidity to be remembered or 
even understood. Although the Castilian nobility had no pre- 
tence to the original independence of the French peers, or to 
the liberties of feudal tenure, they assumed the same })rivilege 
of rebelling upon any provocation from their sovereign. When 
such occurred, they seem to have been permitted, by legal 
custom, to renounce their allegiance by a solemn instrument, 
which exempted them from the penalties of treason. A very 
few families composed an oligarchy, the worst and most 
ruinous condition of political society, alternatel}' the favorites 
and ministers of the prince, or in arms against him. If unable 
to protect themselves in their walled towns, and by the aid of 
their faction, these Christian patriots retired to Aragon or 
Granada, and excited an hostile power against their country, 
and perhai)S their religion. There is indeed some apology for 
the conduct of the nobles in the character of their sovereigns, 
who had but one favorite method of avenging a dissembled 
injury, or antici])ating a suspected treason. But whatever 
vi(deuce and arbitrary s])irit might be imputed to Sancho and 
Alfonso was forgotten in the unexampled tyranny of Peter 
the Cruel (a.d. 1350). The history of his reign charges him 
with the murder of his wife, Blanche of Bourbon, most of his 
brothers and sisters, with Eleanor Gusman, their mother, 
many Castilian nobles, and multitudes of the commonalty; be- 
sides continual outrages of licentiousness, and especially a 
pretended nuirriage with a noble lady of the Castrian family. 
At length a rebellion was headed by his illegitimate brother, 
Henry, count of Trastamare, with the assistance of Aragon 
and Portugal. This, however, would probably have failed of 
dethroning Peter, a resolute prince, and certainly not destitute 
of many faithful supporters, if Henry had not invoked the 
more powerful succor of Bertrand du Guesclin, and the com- 
panies of adventure who, after the pacification between France 



Spain. HOUSE OF TKASTAMAKE. 237 

and England, had lost the occupation of war, and retained 
only that of plunder. With mercenaries so disciplined it was 
in vain fof Peter to contend; but, abandoning Spain for a 
moment, he had recourse to a more powerful weapon from the 
same armory. Edward the Black Prince, then resident at 
Bordeaux, was induced by the promise of Biscay to enter 
Spain as the ally of C;istile ; and at the great battle of Nava- 
rette he continued lord of the ascendant over those who had 
so often already been foiled by his prowess (a.d. 1367). Du 
Guesclin was made })ris()ner; Henry tied to Aragon, and Peter 
remounted the tlirone. But a second revolution was at hand : 
the Black Prince, whom he had ungratefully offended, with- 
drew into Guienne ; and lie lost his kingdom and life in a 
second short contest with his brother. 

§ 9. A more fortunate period began with the accession of 
Henry II. (a.d. 1308). His own reign was hardly disturbed 
by any rebellion ; and thougli his successors, John I. (a.d. 
1379) and Henry III. (a.d. 1390), were not altogether so un- 
molested, especially the latter, who ascended the throne in his 
minority, yet the troubles of their time were slight in com- 
parison with those formerly excited by the houses of Lara 
and Haro, both of which were now happily extinct. Though 
Henry II.'s illegitimacy left him no title but popular choice, 
his queen was sole representative of the Cerdas, the offspring, 
as has been mentioned above, of Sanclio IV.'s elder brother, 
and, by the extinction of the younger branch, un(iuestioned 
heiress of the royal line. Some years afterwards, by the 
marriage of Henry III. with Catherine, daughter of John of 
Gaunt and of Constance, an illegitimate child of Peter the 
Ch-uel, her pretensions, such as they were, became merged in 
the crown. 

Ko kingdom could be worse prepared to meet the disorders 
of a minority than Castile, and in none did the circumstances 
so freciueutly recur. John II. was but fourteen months old at 
his accession (a.d. 1406), and but for the disinterestedness of 
his uncle Ferdinand, the nobility would have been inclined to 
avert the danger by placing that prince upon the throne. In 
this instance, however, Castile suffered less from faction during 
the infancy of her sovereign than in his maturity. The queen 
dowager, at iirst jointly with Ferdinand, and solely after his 
accession to the crown of Aragon, administered the govern- 
ment with credit. Fifty years had elapsed at her death, in 
1418, since the elevation of the house of Trastamare, who had 
entitled themselves to public affection by conforming them- 



238 HOUSE OF TllASTAMARE. Chap. IV. 

selves more strictly than their predecessors to the constitu- 
tional laws of Castile, wliicli were never so well established as 
during this period. This comparatively golden period ceases 
at the majority of John II. His reign was filled up by a 
series of conspiracies and civil wars, headed by his cousins 
John and Henry, the infants of Aragon, who enjoyed very ex- 
tensive territories in Castile, by the testament of their father 
Ferdinand. Their brother, the king of Aragon, frequently 
lent the assistance of his arms. John himself, the elder of 
these two princes, by marriage with the heiress of the king- 
dom of Navarre, stood in a double relation to Castile, as a 
neighboring sovereign, and as a member of the native oli- 
garchy. These conspiracies were all ostensibly directed against 
the favorite of John II., Alvaro de Luna, who retained for 
five-and-thirty years an absolute control over his feeble master. 
The adverse faction naturally ascribed to this powerful minis- 
ter every criminal intention and all public mischiefs. He was 
certainly not more scrupulous than the generality of states- 
men, and appears to have been rapacious in accumulating 
wealth. But there was an energy and courage about Alvaro 
de Luna which distinguishes him from the cowardly sycoi)h:ints 
who usually rise by the favor of weak princes ; and Castile 
probably would not have been happier under the administra- 
tion of his enemies. His fate is among the memorable lessons 
of history. After a life of troubles endured for the sake of 
this favorite, sometimes a fugitive, sometimes a prisoner, his 
son heading rebellions against him, John II. suddenly yielded 
to an intrigue of the palace, and adopted sentiments of dislike 
towards the man he had so long loved. No substantial charge 
appears to have been brought against Alvaro de Luna, except 
that general malversation which it was too late for the king to 
object to him. The real cause of John's change of affection 
was, most probably, the insupportable restraint which the 
weak are apt to find in that spell of a commanding under- 
standing which they dare not break — the torment of living- 
subject to the ascendant of an inferior, which has produced so 
many examples of fickleness in sovereigns. That of John II. 
is not the least conspicuous. Alvaro de Luna was brought to 
a summary trial and beheaded ; his estates were confiscated. 
He met his death with the intrepidity of Strafford, to whom 
he seems to have borne some reseniblance in character. 

John 11. did not long survive his minister, dying in 1454, 
after a reign that may be considered as inglorious compared 
with any except that of his successor. li the father was not 



Spain. NATIONAL COUNCILS. 239 

respected, the son fell completely into contempt. A powerful 
confederacy of disaffected nobles was formed against the royal 
authority, and Henry IV. was deposed in an assembly of their 
faction at Avila with a sort of theatrical pageantry which has 
often been described (a.d. 14G5). The confederates set up 
Alfonso, the king's brother, and a civil war of some duration 
ensued, in which they had the support of Aragon. The Queen 
of Castile had at this time borne a daughter, whom the ene- 
mies of Henry IV., and indeed no small part of his adherents, 
were determined to treat as spurious. Accordingly, after the 
death of Alfonso, his sister Isabel was considered as heiress 
of the kingdom. She might have aspired, with the assistance of 
the confederates, to its immediate possession ; but, avoiding 
the odium of a contest with her brother, Isabel agreed to a 
treaty, by which the succession was absolutely settled upon 
her (a.d. 14C9). This arrangement was not long afterwards 
followed by the union of that princess with Ferdinand, son of 
the King of Aragon. This marriage was by no means accept- 
able to a part of the Castilian oligarchy, who had preferred a 
connection with Portugal. And as Henry had never lost sight 
of the interests of one whom he considered, or pretended to 
consider, as his daughteir, he took the first opportunity of 
revoking his forced disposition of the crown and restoring the 
direct line of succession in favor of the princess Joanna. 
Upon his death, in 1474, the right was to be decided by arms. 
The scale between the two parties was pretty equally balanced 
till, the King of Portugal having been defeated at Toro in 
1476, Joanna's party discovered their inability to prosecute 
the war l)y themselves, and successively made their submis- 
sion to Ferdinand and Isabella. 

§ 10. The Castilians always considered themselves as sub- 
ject to a legal and limited monarchy. For several ages the 
crown was elective, as in most nations of German origin, 
within the limits of one royal family. In general, of course, 
the public choice fell upon the nearest heir ; and it became 
a prevailing usage to elect a son during the lifetime of his 
father, till about the eleventh century a right of hereditary 
succession was clearly established. 

In the original Gothic monarchy of Spain, civil as well as 
ecclesiastical affairs were decided in national councils, the 
acts of many of which are still extant, and have been pub- 
lished in ecclesiastical collections. To these assemblies the 
dukes and other proviucial governors, and in general the 
principal individuals of the realm, were summoned along with 



240 NATIONAL COUNCILS. Chap. IV. 

spiritual persons. This double aristocracy of Church and 
State continued to form the great council of advice and con- 
sent in the tirst ages of the new kingdoms of Leon and Cas- 
tile. The prelates and nobility, or rather some of the mors 
distinguished nobility, appear to have concurred in all general 
measures of legislation, as we infer from the preamble of their 
statutes. It would be against analogy, as well as without 
evidence, to suppose that any representation of the commons 
had been formed in the earlier period of the monarchy. In 
the preamble of laws passed in 1020, and at several subsequent 
times during that and the ensuing century, we find only the 
bishops and magnates recited as present. But in IISS, the 
tirst year of the reign of Alfonso IX., deputies from Castilian 
towns are expressly mentioned ; and from that era were con- 
stant and necessary parts of those general assemblies. 

Every chief town of a concejo or cor})oration ought perha])S, 
by the constitution of Castile, to have received its regular writ 
for the election of deputies to Cortes. But there does not ap- 
pear to have been, in the best times, any iniiform practice in 
this respect. We find, in short, a good deal more irregularity 
than during the same period in England, where the number of 
electing borouglis varied pretty considerably at every Parlia- 
ment. Yet the Cortes of Castile did not cease to be a 
numerous body and a fair representation of the people till the 
reign of John II. The first princes of the house of Trasta- 
mare had acted in all ])oints with the advice of their Cortes. 
But John II., and still more his son Henry IV., being conscious 
of their own unpopularity, did not venture to meet a full as- 
sembly of the nation. Their writs were directed only to 
certain towns — an abuse for wliicli the looseness of preceding 
usage liad given a pretence. It must be owned tliat the peo- 
])le bore it in general very ])atiently. Many of the corporate 
towns, impoverished by civil warfare and other causes, were glad 
to save the cost of defraying their deputies' expenses. Tims, 
by the year 1480, only seventeen cities had retained privilege 
of representation. A vote was afterwards added for Granada, 
and three more in later times for Falencia, and the provinces 
of Estremadura and Galicia.^ It miglit have been easy, per- 

3 The cities which retained their represcnt.ition in Cortes were BurRos, Toletlo 
(there was a constant dispule for precedence between these two), lioon, (Jranada, 
Cordova, Murci:i, Jaen, Zaniora, Toro, Soria, Valladolid, Sahiinanca, Segovia, Avila, 
Madrid, Guadalaxara, and Cneiica. The representatives of tln'se were supposed to 
vote not only for their iimiiediate constituents, but for other adjacent towns. 'J'hus 
Toro voted for I'alencia and the kingdom of Gal icia, before they obtained separate 
votes; Salamanca for most of Ustremadura; (Juadalaxara for Siguenza and four 
hundred other towns. 



Spain. CONSTITUTION OF CORTES. 241 

haps, to redress this grievance while the exclusion was yet 
fresh and recent. But the privileged towns, with a mean and 
preposterous selfishness, although their zeal for liberty was at 
its height, could not endure the only means of effectually se- 
curing it, by a restoration of elective franchises to their 
fellow-citizens. The Cortes of 1506 assert, with one of those 
bold falsilications upon which a popular body sometimes ven- 
tures, that " it is established by some laws, and by immemorial 
usage, that eighteen cities of these kingdoms have the right of 
sending deputies to Cortes, and no more ; " remonstrating 
against the attempts made by some other towns to obtain the 
same privilege, which they request may not be conceded. This 
remonstrance is repeated in 1512. 

From the reign of Alfonso XI., who restrained the govern- 
ment of corporations to an oligarchy of magistrates, the right 
of electing members of Cortes was confined to the ruling body, 
the bailiffs or regidores, whose number seldom exceeded 
twenty -four, and whose succession was kept up by close elec- 
tion among themselves. The people therefore had no direct 
sliare in the choice of representatives. Experience proved, as 
several instances in these pages will show, that even upon this 
narrow basis the deputies of Castile were not deficient in zeal 
for their country and its liberties. But it must be confessed 
that a small body of electors is always liable to corrupt influ- 
ence and to intimidation. John II. and Henry IV. often 
invaded the freedom of election ; the latter even named some 
of the deputies. Several energetic remonstrances Were made 
in Cortes against this flagrant grievance. Laws were enacted 
and other precautions devised to secure the due return of dep- 
uties. In the sixteenth century the evil, of course, was 
aggravated. Charles and Philip cornipted the members by 
bribery. Even in 1573 the Cortes are bold enough to com- 
l)lain that creatures of government were sent thither, " who 
were always held for suspected by the other deputies, and 
cause disagreement among them." 

There seems to be a considerable obscurity al)out the consti- 
tion of the Cortes, so far as relates to the two higher estates, 
the spiritual and temporal nobility. It is admitted that down 
to the latter part (jf the thirteenth century, and especially be- 
fore the introduction of representatives from tlie commons, 
they were summoned in considera,ble numbers. I>ut from the 
reign of Sancho IV. they took much less share and retained 
much less influence in the deliberation of Cortes. In the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries they were more and more 
excluded. 



242 RIGHT OF TAXATION. Chap. IV. 

It is manifest that tlie king exercised very freely a prerog- 
ative of calling or omitting persons of both the higher orders 
at his discretion. The bishops were numerous, and many of 
their sees not rich ; while the same objections of inconvenience 
applied perhaps to the ricoshondjres, but far more forcibly to 
the lower nobility, the hijosdalgo or caballeros. Castile never 
adopted the institution of deputies from this order, as in the 
States-General of France and some other countries, much less 
that liberal system of landed representation, which forms one 
of the most admirable peculiarities in our own constitution. 
It will be seen hereafter that spiritual and even temporal peers 
were summoned by our kings with much irregularity : and the 
disordered state of Castile through almost every reign was 
likely to prevent the establishment of any fixed usage in this 
and most other points. 

§ 11. The primary and most essential characteristic of a 
limited monarchy is that money can only be levied upon the 
people through the consent of their representatives. This prin- 
cijile was thoroughly established in Castile ; and the statutes 
which enforce it, the remonstrances which })rotest against its 
violation, bear a lively analogy to corresponding circumstances 
in the history of our constitution. The lands of the nobility 
and clergy were, I believe, always exempted from direct taxa- 
tion — an immunity which perhaps rendered the attendance of 
the members of those estates in the Cortes less regular. The 
corporate districts or concejos, which, as I have observed 
already, differed from the communities of France and England 
by possessing a larga extent of territory subordinate to the 
principal town, were bound by their charter to a stii)ulated 
annual payment, the price of their franchises, called moneda 
forera. Beyond this sum nothing could be demanded without 
the consent of the Cortes. Demands of money do not seem to 
have been very usual before the prodigal reign of Alfonso X. 
That prince and his immediate successors were not miieh 
inclined to respect the rights of their subjects ; but they 
encountered a steady and insuperable resistance. An explicit 
law was enacted by Alfonso XL in 1328, who bound himself 
not to exact from his people, or cause them to pay any tax, 
either partial or general, not hitherto established by law, with- 
out the previous grant of all the deputies convened to the Cor- 
tes. This abolition of illegal im])ositions was several times 
confirmed by the same jn-ince, and his successors. The Catho- 
lic kings, as they are eminently called, Ferdinand and Isabella, 
never violated this part of the constitution. In the Recopila- 



Spain. RIGHT OF TAXATION". 243 

cioii, or code of Castilian law luiblished by Philip II., we read 
a positive declaration against arbitrary imposition of taxes, 
which remained unaltered on the statute-book till the present 
age. The law was indeed frequently broken by Philip II. ; 
but the Cortes, who retained througliout the l()th century a 
degree of steadiness and courage truly admirable when we con- 
sider their political weakness, did not cease to remonstrate 
with that suspicious tyrant, and recorded their unavailing 
appeal to the law of Alfonso XL, " so ancient and just, and 
which so long time has been used and observed." 

The free assent of the people by their representatives to 
grants of money was by no means a mere matter of form. It 
was connected with other essential rights indispensable to its 
effectual exercise ; those of examining public accounts and 
checking the expenditure. The Cortes, in the best times at 
least, were careful to grant no money until they were assured 
that what had been already levied on their constituents had 
been properly employed. 

The contributions granted by Cortes were assessed and col- 
lected by respectable individuals (hombres buenos) of the seve- 
ral towns and villages. The rej^trtition, as the French call it, 
of direct taxes is a matter of the highest importance in those 
countries where they are imposed l)y means of a gross assess- 
m(mt on a district. The produce was paid to the royal council. 
It could not be applied to any other purpose than that to which 
the tax had been appropriated. Thus the Cortes of Segovia, 
in 1407, gi-anted a subsidy for the war against Granada, on 
condition " that it should not be laid out on any other service 
except this war ; " which they requested the queen and Ferdi- 
nand, both regents in John II. 's minority, to confirm by oath. 
Part, however, of the money remaining unexpended, Ferdinand 
wished to apply it to his own ol)ject of procuring the crown of 
Aragon ; but the queen first obtained not only a release from 
her oath l)y the pope, but the consent of the Cortes. 

The Cortes did not consider it beyond the line of their duty, 
notAvithstanding the respectful manner in which they always 
addressed the sovereign, to i-emonstrate against profuse expen- 
diture even in his own household. They told Alfonso X. in 
1258, in the homely style of that age, that they thought it fit- 
ting that the king and his wife should eat at the rate of a hun- 
dred and fifty maravedis a day, and no more ; and that the 
king should order his attendants to eat more moderately than 
they did. Even in 1559 they spoke with an undaunted Casti- 
lian spirit to Philip II : " Sir, the expenses of your royal estab- 



244 POWER AND FORMS OF THE CORTES. Chap. IV. 

lisliment and household are much increased ; and we conceive 
it would much redound to the good of these kingdoms that 
your majesty should direct them to be lowered, both as a relief 
to your wants, and that all the great men and other subjects of 
your majesty may take example therefrom to restrain the 
great disorder and excess they commit in that respect." 

§ 12. The forms of a Castilian Cortes were analagous to 
those of an English Parliament in the fourteenth century. 
They were summoned by a writ almost exactly coincident in 
expression with that in use among us. The session was 
opened by a speech from the chancellor or other chief officer 
of the court. The deputies were invited to consider certain 
special business, and commonly to grant money. After the 
principal affairs were des})atched they conferred together, 
and, having examined the instructions of their respective con- 
stituents, drew up a schedule of i>etitions. These were duly 
answered one by one ; and from the petition and answer, if 
favorable, laws afterwards drawn up where the matter required 
a new law, or promises of redress were given if the petition 
related to an abuse or grievance. In the struggling condition 
of Spanish liberty under Charles T., the crown began to neglect 
answering the petitions of (Jortes, or to use unsatisfactory gen- 
eralities of expression. This gave rise to many remonstrances. 
The deputies insisted in 1523 on having answers before they 
granted money. They repeated the same contention in 1525, 
and obtained a general law inserted in the Recopilacion enact- 
ing tliat the king should answer all their petitions before he 
dissolved the assembly. This, however was disregarded as 
before ; but the Cortes whose 'intrepid honesty under Philip 
II. so often attracts our admiration, continued as late as 1586 
to appeal to the written statute and lament its violation. 

§ 13. According to the ancient fundamental constitution of 
Castile, the king did not legislate for his subjects witliout their 
consent. This consent was originally given only by the higher 
estates, who might be considered, in a large sense, as represent- 
ing the nation, though not chosen by it ; i)ut from the end of 
the twelfth century by the elected dei)uties of the commons in 
Cortes. The laws of the Siete l^artidas, compiled by Alfonso 
X., did not obtain any direct sanction till the famous Cortes 
of Alcala, in 1348, when they were confirmed along with 
several others, forming altogether the basis of the statute-law 
of Spain. It appears, upon the whole, to have been a consti- 
tutional principle, that laws could neither be made nor annulled 
except in Cortes. In 150() this is claimed by the deputies as 



Spain. LEGISLATIVE RIGHT. 245 

an established right. John I. had long before admitted that 
what was done by Cortes and general assemblies could not be 
undone by letters missive, but by such Cortes and assemblies 
alone. For the kings of Castile had adopted the English prac- 
tice of dispensing with statutes by a non obstante clause in 
their grants. But the Cortes remonstrated more steadily 
against this abuse than our Parliament, who suffered it to 
remain in a certain degree till the Revolution. It was several 
times enacted upon their petition, especially by an explicit 
statute of Henry II., that grants and letters patent dispensing 
with statutes should not be obeyed. Nevertheless, John II., 
trusting to force or the servility of the judges, had the assur- 
ance to dispense explicitly with this very law. The Cortes of 
Valladolid, in 1442, obtained fresh promises and enactments 
against such an abuse. Philip I. and Charles I. began to legis- 
late without asking the consent of Cortes ; this grew mi;ch 
worse under Philip II., and reached its height under his suc- 
cessors, who entirely abolished all constitutional privileges. 
In 1555 we find a petition that laws made in Cortes should be 
revoked nowhere else. The reply was such as became that 
age : " To this we answer, that we shall do what best suits our 
government." But even in 1G19, and still afterwards, the 
patriot representatives of Castile continued to lift an unavail- 
ing voice against illegal ordinances, though in the form of very 
humble petition; perhaps the latest testimonies to the expir- 
ing liberties of their country. The denial of exclusive legis- 
lative authority to the crown must, however, be understood 
to admit the legality of particular ordinances designed to 
strengthen the king's executive government. These, no doubt, 
like the royal proclamations in England, extended sometimes 
very far, and subjected the people to a sort of arbitrary coer- 
cion, much beyond what our enlightened notions of freedom 
would consider as reconcilable to it. But in the Middle Ages 
such temporary commands and prohibitions were not reckoned 
strictly legislative, and passed, perhaps rightly, for inevitable 
conserpiences of a scanty code and short session of the national 
council. 

The kings were obliged to swear to the observance of laws 
enacted in Cortes, besides their general coronation oath to 
keep the laws and preserve the liberties of their people. 

§ 14. It was customary to assemble the Cortes of Castile 
for many purposes besides those of granting money and con- 
curring in legislation. They were summoned in every reign to 
acknowledge and confirm the succession of the heir-apparent; 



246 COUNCIL OF CASTILE. Chap. IV. 

and upon liis accession to swear allegiance. These acts were, 
however, little more than formal, and accordingly have been 
preserved for the sake of parade after all the real dignity of 
the Cortes was annihilated. In the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries they claimed and exercised very ample powers. 
They assumed the right, when questions of regency occurred, 
to limit the prerogative, as well as to designate the persons 
who were to use it. And the frequent minorities of Castilian 
kings, which were unfavorable enough to tranquillity and sub- 
ordination, served to confirm these parliamentary privileges. 
Tlie Cortes were usually consulted upon all material business. 
A law of Alfonso XI. in 1328, printed in the Recopilacion or 
code published by Philip II., declares, " Since in the arduous 
affairs of our kingdom the counsel of our natural subjects is 
necessary, especially of the deputies from our cities and towns, 
therefore we ordain and command that on such great occasions 
the Cortes shall be assembled, and counsel shall be taken of 
the three estates of our kingdoms, as the kings our forefathers 
have been used to do." 

§ 15. The kings of Leon and Castile acted, during the in- 
terval of the Cortes, by the advice of a smaller council, answer- 
ing, as it seems, almost exactly to the king's ordinary council 
in England. In early ages, before the introduction of the 
commons, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish this body 
from the general council of the nation; being composed, in 
fact, of the same class of persons, though in smaller numbers. 
A similar difficulty applies to the English history. The nature 
of their proceedings seems best to ascertain the distinction. 
All executive acts, including those ordinances which may ap- 
pear rather of a legislative nature, all grants and charters, are 
declared to be with the assent of the court (curia) or of the 
magnates of the palace, or of the chiefs or nobles. This yirivy 
council was an essential part of all European monarchies ; and, 
though the sovereign might be considei-ed as free to call in 
the advice of whomsoever he pleased, yet, in fact, the princes 
of the blood and most powerful nobility had anciently a con- 
stitutional right to be members of such a council, so that it 
formed a very material check upon his personal authority. 

The council underwent several changes in progress of time 
wliich it is not necessary to enumerate. It was justly deemed 
an important member of the constitution, and the Cortes 
showed a laudable anxiety to procure its composition in such a 
manner as to form a guaranty for the due execution of laws 
after their own dissolution. Several times, especially in mi- 



Spain. ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 247 

iiorities, they even named its members, or a part of tliem ; 
and in the reigns of Henry III. and John II. they obtained 
the privik^ge of adding a permanent deputation, consisting 
of four persons elected out of their own body, annexed as it 
were to the council, who were to continue at tlie court during 
the interval of Cortes and watch over the due observance of 
the laws. This deputation continued as an empty formality 
in the sixteenth century. In the council the king was bound 
•to sit personally three days in the week. Their business, 
which included the whole executive government, was distrib- 
uted with considerable accuracy into what might be despatched 
by the council alone, under their own seals and signatiires, 
and what required the royal seal. The consent of this body 
was necessary for almost every act of the crown ; for pensions 
or grants of money, ecclesiastical and political promotions, and 
for charters of pardon, the easy concession of which was a 
great encouragement to the homicides so usual in those ages, 
and was restrained by some of our own laws. But the council 
did not exercise any judicial authority, unlike in this to the 
ordinary council of the kings of England, It was not until 
the days of Ferdinand and Isabella that this, among other 
innovations, was introduced. 

§ 16. Civil and criminal justice was administered, in the 
first instance, by the alcaldes, or municipal judges of towns ; 
elected within themselves, originally, by the community at 
large, but, in subsequent times, by the governing body. In 
other places a lord possessed the right of jurisdiction by grant 
from the crown, not, what we find in countries where the feu- 
dal system was more thoroughly established, as incident to 
his own territorial superiority. The kings, however, began in 
the tldrteenth century to appoint judges of their own, called 
corregidores, a name which seems to express concurrent juris- 
diction with the regidores, or ordinary magistrates. The 
Cortes frequently remonstrated against this encroachment. 
Even where the king appointed magistrates at a city's request, 
he was bound to select them from among the citizens. From 
this immediate jurisdiction an appeal lay to the adelantado or 
governor of the province, and from thence to the tribunal of 
royal alcaldes. As a court of appeal, the royal alcaldes had 
the supreme jurisdiction. The king could only cause their 
sentence to be revised, but neither alter nor revoke it. 

§ 17. Castile bore a closer analogy to England in its form 
of civil polity than France or even Aragon. But the frequent 
disorders of its government and a barbarous state of manners 



248 AFFAIRS OF AKAGON. Chap. IV. 

rendered violations of law much more continual and flagrant 
that tliey were in England under the Plantagenet dynasty.- 
And besides these practical mischiefs, there were two essen- 
tial defects in the constitution of Castile, through which, 
perhaps, it was ultimately subverted. It wanted those two 
brilliants in the coronet of British liberty, the representation 
of freeholders among the commons, and trial by jury. The 
Cortes of Castile became a congress of deputies from a few 
cities, public-spirited indeed and intrepid, as we find them in 
bad times, to an eminent degree, but too much limited in 
number, and too unconnected with the territorial aristocracy, 
to maintain a just balance against the crown Yet, with every 
disadvantage, that country possessed a liberal form of govern- 
ment, and was animated with a noble spirit for its defence. 

§ 18. Though the kingdom of Aragon was very inferior in 
extent to that of Castile, yet the advantages of a better form 
of government and wiser sovereigns, with those of industry 
and commerce along a line of sea-coast, rendered it almost 
ecpial in importance. Castile rarely intermeddled in the 
civil dissensions of Aragon ; the kings of Aragon frequently 
carried their arms into the heart of Castile. During the 
sanguinary outrages of Peter the Cruel, and the stormy rev- 
olutions which ended in establishing the house of Trastamare, 
Aragon was not indeed at peace, nor altogether well gov- 
erned; but her political consequence rose in the eyes of Eu- 
rope through the long reign of the ambitious and wily Peter 
IV., whose sagacity and good-fortune redeemed, according to 
the common notions of mankind, the iniquity with which he 
stripped his relation, the King of Majorca, of the Balearic 
Islands, and the constant pertidiousness of his character. I 
have mentioned in another place the Sicilian war, prosecuted 
with so much eagerness for many years by Peter III. and his 
son Alfonso III.* After this object was relinquished, James 
II. undertook an enterprise less splendid, but not much less 
diflicult, the conquest of Sardinia. That island, long accus- 
tomed to inde})endence, cost an incredible expense of blood 
and treasure to the kings of Aragon during the whole four- 
teenth century. It was not fully subdued till the commence- 
ment of the next, under the reign of Martin. 

At the death of Martin, king of Aragon, in 1410, a memo- 
rable question arose as to the right of succession. Though 
Petronilla, daughter of Ramiro II., had reigned in her own 
right from llo7 to 1172, an opinion seems to have gained 

* See p. 213. 



Spain. 



AFFAIRS OF AIIAGON. 



249 



ground from the thirteenth century that fema.es could not 
inherit the crown of Aragon. I'eter IV. had excited a civil 
war by attetnjjtiug to settle the succession upon his daughter, 
to the exclusion of his next brother. The birth of a son about 
tlie same time suspended the ultimate decision of this ques- 
tion ; but it was tacitly understood that what is called the 
Salic law ought to prevail. Accordingly, on the death of 
John I. in 139o, his two daughters were set aside in favor of 
his brother Martin, though not without opposition on the part 
of the elder, whose husband, the Count of Foix, invaded the 
kingdom, and desisted from his pretension only through want 
of force. Martin's son, the King of Sicily, dying in his 
father's lifetime, the nation was anxious that the king should 
fix upon his successor, and would probably have acquiesced in 
his choice. But his dissolution occurring more rapidly than 
was expected, the throne remained absolutely vacant. The 
Count of Urgel had obtained a grant of the lieutenancy, which 
was the right of the heir-apparent. This nobleman possessed 
an extensive territory in Catalonia, bordering on the Tyrenees. 
He was grandson of James, next brother to Peter IV., and 
according to our rules of inheritance, certainly stood in the 
first place. The other claimants were the Duke of Gandia, 
grandson of James 11,^ who, though descended from a more 
distant ancestor, set up a claim founded on proximity to the 
royal stock, which in some countries was preferred to a repre- 
sentative title ; the Duke of Calabria, son of Violante, younger 
daughter of John I. (the Countess of Foix being childless) ; 

6 The subjoined pedigree will show more clearly the respective titles of the com- 
petitors : 

James II., died 1327. 

I 



Alfon-SO IV., d. 1336. 



D. of Gandia. 



Peter IV., d. 1337. 

I 



James, 
C. of Urgel. 



Eleanor, Q. of Castile. John I., d. 1395 

I I 



Henry III., 
K. of Castile. 



John II., 
K. of Castile. 



Ferdinand. 



I\1.\i:tin, Peter, 
d. HIO. C. of Urgel. 

I C. of Urgel 

Martin, 
K. of Sicily, 1409. 



Joanna, Violante, 
Countess Q. of Kaples. 
of Foix. I 

Louis, D. of 
Calabria. 



Frederick. 
C. of Luna. 



D. of Gandia. 



250 AFFxilltS OF ARAGON. Chap. IV. 

Frederick, count of Luna, a natural son of the younger Martin, 
King of Sicily, legitimated by the pope, but with a reservation 
excluding him from royal succession ; and finally, Ferdinand, 
infant of Castile, son of the late king's sister. The Count of 
Urgel was favored in general by tlie Catalans, and he seemed 
to have a powerful support in Antonio de Luna, a baron of 
Aragon, so rich that he might go through his own estate from 
France to Castile. But this apparent superiority frustrated 
his hopes. The justiciaiy and other leading Aragonese were 
determined not to suifer this great constitutional question to 
be decided by an ap[)eal to force, which might sweep away 
their liberties in the struggle. Urgel, confident of his right, 
and surrounded by men of ruined fortunes, was unwilling to 
submit his pretensions to a civil tribunal. His adherent, 
Antonia de Luna, committed an extraordinary outrage, the 
assassination of the Archbishop of Saragossa, which alienated 
the minds of good citizens from his cause. On the other hand, 
neither the Duke of Gandia, who was very old, nor the Count 
of Luna seemed lit to succeed. The party of Ferdinand, there- 
fore, gained ground by degrees. It was determined, however, 
to render a legal sentence. The Cortes of each nation agreed 
upon the nomination of nine persons, three Aragonese, three 
Catalans, and three Valencians, who were to discuss the pre- 
tensions of the several competitors, and by a plurality of six 
votes to adjudge the crown. Nothing could be more solemn, 
more peaceful, nor, in appearance, more equitable than the 
proceedings of this tribunal. They summoned the claimants 
l)efore them, and heard them by counsel. A month was 
passed in hearing arguments ; a second was allotted to con- 
sidering them ; and at the expiration of tlie prescribed time 
it was announced to the people, by the mouth of St. Vincent 
Ferrier, that Ferdinand of Castile had ascended the throne 
(A. D. 1412). 

In this decision it is impossible not to suspect that the 
judges were swayed rather by politic considerations than a 
strict sense of hereditary right. It was, therefore, by no 
means universally popular, especially in Catalonia, of which 
])rincipality the Count of Urgel was a native; and perhaps 
the great rebellion of the Catalans fifty years afterwards may 
be traced to the disaffection which this breach, as they thought, 
of tlie lawful succession had excited. Ferdinand, however, 
was well received in Aragon. Ferdinand's successor was his 
son, Alfonso V. (a.d. 1416), more distinguished in the history 
of Italy than of Spain. F'or all the latter years of his life he 



Si'AiN. CONSTITUTION OF AKACON. 251 

never quitted the kingdom that lie had acquired by his arms ; 
and, enchanted by the delicious air of Naples, intrusted the 
government of his iiatrimonial territories to the care of a 
brother and an heir, John II., upon whom they devolved by 
the death of Alfonso without legitimate ])rogeny. 

§ 19. It is consonant with the })rinciple of this work to pass 
over the common details of history, in order to fix the reader's 
attention more fully on subjects of philosophical incjuiry. 
I'erhaps in no European monarchy exce})t our own was tlu; 
form of government more interesting than in Aragon, as a, 
fortunate temperament of law and justice with the royal 
authority. So far as anything can be pronounced of its earlier 
period before the capture of Saragossa in 1118, it w%as a kiud 
of regal aristocracy, where a small number of powerful l)arons 
elected their sovereign on every vacancy, though, as usual in 
other countries, out of one family ; and considered him as 
little more than the chief of their confederacy. These were 
the ricoshombres, or barons, the first order of tlie state. 
Among these the kings of Aragon, in subsequent times, as 
they extended their dominions, shared the conquered territory 
in grants of honors on a feudal tenure. For this system was 
fully established in the kingdom of Aragon. A ricohombre 
was obliged to hold of the king an lionor or barony capable of 
supporting more than three knights ; and this he was bound 
to distribute among his vassals in military fiefs. Once in the 
year he might be summoned with his feudatories to serve the 
sovereign for two or three months ; and he was to attend 
the royal court, or general assembly, as a counsellor, whenever 
•called upon, assisting in its judicial as well as deliberative 
business. In the towns and villages of his barony he might 
appoint bailiffs to administer justice and receive penalties ; 
but the higher criminal jurisdiction seems to have been re- 
served to the crown. 

Below these superior nobles were' the mesnadaries, corre- 
sponding to our mere tenants in chief, holding estates not 
baronial immediately from the crown ; and the military vas- 
sals of the high nobility, the knights and mfanzones : a word 
which may be rendered by gentlemen. These had consider- 
able privileges in that aristocratic government; they were 
exempted from all taxes, they could only be tried by the royal 
judges for any crime ; and offences committed against 
them were punished with additional severity. The ignoble 
classes were, as in other countries, the burgesses of towns, 
and the villeins or peasantry. The peasantry seen; to 



252 PRIVILEGES OF A II AGON. Chap. IV. 

have been subject to territorial servitude, as in France and 
England. 

§ 20. Though from the twelfth century the principle of 
hereditary succession to the throne su])erseded, in Aragon as 
well as Castile, the original right of choosing a sovereign with- 
in the royal family, it was still founded upon one more sacred 
and fundamental, that of compact. No king of Aragon was 
entitled to assume that name until he had taken a coronation 
oath, administered by the justiciary at Saragossa, to observe 
the laws and liberties of the realm. 

Blancas quotes a noble passage from the acts of Cortes in 
1451. " We have always heard of old time, and it is found by 
experience, that, seeing the great barrenness of this land, and 
the poverty of the realm, if it were not for the liberties there- 
of, the folk would go hence to live and abide in other realms 
and lands more fruitful." This high spirit of freedom had 
long animated the Aragonese. After several contests with the 
crown, they compelled Peter III., in 1283, to grant a law, 
called the General Privilege, the Magna Charta of Aragon, 
and perhaps a more full and satisfactory basis of civil liberty 
than our own. It contains a series of provisions against arbi- 
trary tallages, spoliations of property, secret process after the 
manner of the Inquisition in criminal charges, sentences of the 
justiciary without assent of the Cortes, appointment of for- 
eigners or Jews to judicial offices ; trials of accused persons 
in places beyond the kingdom, the use of torture, except in 
charges of falsifying the coin, and the bribery of jvulges. 
These are claimed as the ancient liberties of their country. 
" Absolute })ower, it is declared, never was the constitution of 
Aragon, nor of Valencia, nor yet of IlibagorQa, nor shall there 
be in time to come any innovation made ; but only the law, 
custom, and privilege which had been anciently used in the 
aforesaid kingdoms." 

The concessions extorted by our ancestors from John, 
Henry III., and Edward I. were secured by the only guaranty 
those times could afford, the determination of the barons to 
enforce them by armed confederacies, and, except in the fa- 
mous commission of twenty-five conservators of Magna Charta, 
in the last year of John, were certainly uuAvarranted by law. 
But the Aragonese established a positive right of maintaining 
their liberties by arms. This was contained in the Privilege 
or Union granted by Alfonso III. in 1287, after a violent con- 
flict with his siibjects ; but which was afterwards so com- 
pletely abolished, and even eradicated from the records of the 



Spain. OFFICE OF JUSTICIAllY. 253 

kingdom, that its yjrecise words have never been recovered. It 
appears to have consisted of two articles ; tixst, that, in the 
case of the king's proceeding forcibly against any member of 
the union without ])revious sentence of the justiciary, the rest 
should be absolved from their allegiance ; secondly, that he 
should hold Cortes every year in Saragossa. During the two 
subsequent reigns of James II. and Alfonso IV., little pretence 
seems to have been given for the exercise of this right. But 
dissensions breaking out under Peter V. in 1347, rather on ac- 
count of his attempt to settle the crown upon his daughter 
than of any specific public grievances, the nobles had recourse 
to the Union. They assembled at Saragossa, and used a re- 
markable seal for all their })ublic instruments — an engraving 
from which may be seen in the historian Blancas. It r(_'})rt'sents 
the king sitting on his throne, with the confederates kneeling 
in a suppliant attitude around, to denote their unwillingness 
to offend. But in the background tents and lines of s})ears are 
discovered, as a hint of their ability and resolution to defend 
themselves. The legend is " Sigillum Unionis Aragonum." 
This respectful demeanor towards a sovereign against whom 
tliey were waging war reminds us of the language held out by 
our Long Parliament before the Presbyterian party was over- 
thrown. These confederates were defeated by the king at 
Epila in 1348. But his prudence and the remaining strength 
of his opponents inducing him to pursue a moderate course, 
there ensued more legitimate and permanent balance of the 
constitution from this victory of the Royalists. The privilege 
of Union was abrogated, Peter himself cutting to pieces with 
his sword the original instrument. But in return many excel- 
lent laws for the security of the subject were enacted ; and 
their preservation was intrusted to the greatest officer of the 
kingdom, the justiciary, whose authority and pre-eminence may 
in a great degree be dated from this period. That watchful- 
ness over public liberty, which originally belonged to the aris- 
tocracy of ricoshombres, always apt to thwart the crown or to 
oppress the people, and which was afterwards maintained by 
the dangerous Privilege of Union, became the duty of a ci\'il 
magistrate accustomed to legal rules and responsible for his 
actions, whose office and functions are the most pleasing fea- 
ture in the constitutional history of Aragon. 

§ 21. The functions of the Justiza or Justiciary of Aragon 
did not differ, in any essential respect, from those of the 
Chief-justice of England, divided, from the time of Edward I., 
among the judges of the King's Bench. But in the practical 



254 PROCESSES OF Chap. IV. 

exercise, indeed, of this power, there was an abundant differ- 
ence. Our English judges, more timid and pliant, left to the 
remonstrances of Parliament that redress of grievances which 
very frequently lay within the sphere of their jurisdiction. 
There is, I believe, no recorded instance of a habeas corpus 
granted in any case of illegal imprisonment by the crown or 
its officers during the continuance of the Plantagenet dynasty. 
We shall speedily take notice of a very different conduct in 
Aragon. 

The office of justiciary, whatever conjectural antiquity some 
have assigned to it, is not to be traced beyond the capture of 
Saragossa in 1118, when the series of magistrates commences. 
But for a great length of time they do not appear to have been 
particularly important; the judicial authority residing in the 
conncil of ricoshombres, whose suffrages the justiciary collected, 
in order to pronounce their sentence rather than his own. 
Gradually, as notions of liberty became more detinite, and laws 
more numerous, the reverence paid to their permanent inter- 
preter grew stronger, and there was fortunately a succession of 
prudent and just men in that high office, tlirough whom it ac- 
quired dignity and stable influence. Still, it was not perhaps 
looked upon as fully equal to maintain public liberty against 
the crown, till in the Cortes of 1^348, after the Privilege of 
Union was forever abolished, such laws were enacted, and such 
authority given to the justiciary, as proved eventually a more 
adequate barrier against oppression than any other country 
could boast. All the royal as well as territorial judges were 
bound to apply for his opinion in case of legal difficulties aris- 
ing in their courts, which he was to certify within eight days. 
By subsequent statutes of the same reign, it was made jjenal 
for any one to obtain letters from the king impeding the exe- 
cution of the justiza's process, and they were declared null. 
Inferior courts were forbidden to proceed in any business after 
his prohibition. Many other laws might be cited corroborating 
the authority of this great magistrate ; but there are two parts 
of his remedial jurisdiction which deserve special notice. 

These are the processes of Jurisfirma, or flrma del derecho, 
and of Mdnifestntion. The former bears some analogy to the 
writs of po7ie and certiorari in England, through which the 
Court of King's Bench exercises its right of withdrawing a 
suit from the jurisdiction of info'ior tribunals. But the Ara- 
gonese jiirisfi/nna was of more extensive operation. Its object 
was not only to bring a cause commenced in an inferior court 
before the justiciary, but to prevent or inhibit any process 



Spain. JURISFIRMA AND MANIFESTATIOK. 255 

from issuing against the person who applied for its benefits, or 
any molestation from being offered to him ; so that, as Blancas 
expresses it, when we have entered into a recognizance before 
the justiciary of Aragon to abide the decision of law, our for- 
tunes shall be protected, by the interposition of his prohibition, 
from the intolerable inupiity of the royal judges. The pro- 
cess termed vianlfestation afforded as ample security for per- 
sonal liberty as that of jurislirma did for property. " To 
manifest any one is to wrest him from the hands of the royal 
officers, that he may not suffer any illegal violence ; not that 
he is at liberty by this process, because the merits of his case 
are still to be inquired into; but because he is now detained 
publicly, instead of being, as it were, concealed, and the charge 
against him is investigated, not suddenly or with passion, but 
in calmness and according to law, therefore this is called man- 
ifestation." The power of this writ (if I may apply our term) 
was such, that it would rescue a man Avhose neck was in the 
halter. A particular prison was allotted to those detained for 
trial under this process. 

Several proofs that such admirable provisions did not remain 
a dead letter in the law of Aragon appear in the two historians, 
Blancas and Zurita, whose noble attachment to liberties, of 
which they had either witnessed or might foretell the extinc- 
tion, continually displays itself. I cannot help illustrating this 
subject by two remarkable instances. The heir-a})parent of 
the kingdom of Aragon had a constitutional right to the lieu- 
tenancy or regency during the sovereign's absence from the 
realm. The title and ofHce, indeed, were permanent, though 
tlie functions must of course have been sujierseded during the 
personal exercise of royal authority. But as neither Catalonia 
nor Valencia, which often demanded the king's presence, were 
considered as parts of tlie kingdom, tliere were pretty frequent 
occasions for tins anticiiiated reign of the eldest ])rince. Sucli 
a regulation was not likely to diminish the mutual and almost 
inevitable jealousies between kings and their heirs-a})parent, 
which have so often disturbed the tranquillity of a court and a 
nation. Peter TV. removed his eldest son, afterwards John I.. 
from the lieutenancy of the kingdom. The prince entered into 
a firma del derecho before the justiciary, Dominic de Cerda, 
who, pronouncing in his favor, enjoined the king to replace liis 
son in the lieutenancy as the undoubted right of the eldest 
born. Peter obeyed, not only in fact, to which, as Blancas 
observes, the law compelled him, but with apparent cheerfulness. 
There are, indeed, no private persons who have so strong au 



-5(> JURISFIRMA AND MANIFESTATION. Chap. IV. 

interest in maintaining a i'vee constitution and the eivil liber- 
ties of their countrymen as the members of royal families, 
since none are so much exposed, in absolute governments, to 
the resentment and suspicion of a reigning monarch. 

John I., who had experienced the protection of law in his 
weakness, had afterwards occasion to find it interposotl against 
his power. This king had sent some citizens of iSaragossa to 
prison without form of law. They applied to Juan de Cerda, 
tlie justiciary, for a manifestation. He issued his writ accord- 
ingly ; nor, says Blancas, could he do otherwise without being 
subject to a heavy fine. The king, pretending that the justici- 
ary was partial, named one of his own judges, the vice-chan- 
cellor, as coadjutor. This raised a constitutional question, 
whether, on suspicion of partiality, a coadjutor to the justici- 
ary could be appointed. The king sent a private order to the 
justiciary not to proceed to sentence upon this interlocutory 
point until he should receive instructions in the council, to 
which he was directed to repair. But he instantly pronounced 
sentence in favor of his exclusive jurisdiction without a coad- 
jutor. He then repaired to the palace. Here the vice-chan- 
cellor, in a long harangue, enjoined him to suspend sentence 
till he had heard the decision of the council. Juan de Cerda 
answered that, the case being clear, he had already pronounced 
upon it. This produced some expressions of anger from the 
king, who began to enter into an argument on the merits of 
the question. But the justiciary answered that, with all def- 
erence to his majesty, he was bound to defend his conduct 
before^ the Cortes, and not elsewhere. On a subsequent day 
the king, having drawn the justiciary to his country palace on 
pretence of hunting, renewed the conversation with the assist- 
ance of his ally, the vice-chancellor ; but no impression was 
made on the venerable magistrate, whom John at length, 
though much pressed by his advisers to violent courses, dis- 
missed with civility. Tlie king was ]n'obably misled through- 
out this transaction, which I have thought fit to draw from 
obscurity, not only in order to illustrate tlie privilege of mani- 
festation, but as exhibiting an instance of judicial firmness 
and integrity, to which, in the fourteenth century, no country 
perhaps in Europe couhi otTer a parallel. 

Before the Cortes of 1348 it seems as if the justiciary might 
have been displaced at the king's pleasure. From that time 
he held his station for life. But lest these high lowers, 
imparted for the prevention of abuses, should themselves be 
abused, the justiciary was responsible, in case of an unjust 



Spaix. KTGirj-.S OF f^KfUSLA'JIOX, KTO. 257 

sf^ntfiice, to the extent of tlifi injiiry iiifiictfid ; and was also 
subjected, by a statute of V-V.iO, to a coui-t of inquiry, composed 
of four pejsons cliosen by the king out of eiglit named by the 
Cortes ; whose office appears to liave been that of examining 
and Hiporting to the four estates in Coi-tes, V>y whom he was 
ultimatr;ly to Vx; a<^;quitted or condemned. This superintend- 
ence of the Coi-tes, however, fxjing tliought dilatory and incon- 
venient, a court of seventeen persons was appointed in 14G1 to 
hear complaints against the judiciary. Some alt^^rations were 
afterwards made in this tribunal/' The justiciary was always 
a knight, chosen from the second order of nobility, tlie barons 
not Ijcing liable to personal punishment. lie administered the 
coronation oath to the king ; and in the Coi-tf:!S of Aiagon the 
justiciary acted as a sort of royal commissioner, opening or 
proroguing the assembly by the king's direction. 

§ 22. No laws could be ena/^;ted or rejjealed, nor any tax 
imposed, without the consent of the estates duly assembled. 
It may easily be supposed that the Aragonese were not behind 
other nations in statutf^s to secure these privileges, which upon 
the whole appf;ar to have been more respected than in any 
other monarchy. The General l^rivilege of ]2S.':> formed a sort 
of groundwoik for this legislation, like the Great Chai-tfa* in 
England. Vtj a clause in this law, Cortes were tfj be held 
every year at Haragossa. I'ut under James II. their time of 
meeting Avas reduced Uj onwi in two years, and the place was 
left to the king's discretion. Xor Avere the CoilXiS of Aragon 
less vigilant tlian those of Castile in claiming a right to be 
consulted in all important deliV^erations of the executive jKnver, 
or in remonstrating against abuses of government, or in super- 
intending the proper expenditure of public money. 

Four estates, or, as they Avere calh-d, arms (hrazos), formed 
the Cortes of Aragon — the prelates and commanders of mili- 
taiy orders, Avho passed for ecclesiastics ; and barons, or ricosf- 
homJ/res ; the equestrian order, or rnfanzonesi, and the deputies 
of royal towns. The two former had a right of ajjpearing by 
proxy. There Avas no representation of tlie infanzones, or 
loAver nobility. But it miLst be remembered that they were 
not numerous, nor Avas the kingdom large. Thirty-five are 
reckoned by Zurita as present in the Cortes of l.'Wo, and 

" Thfr=e rf-;rijIation3 wef v«;rv acc'-ptabU: to thrr nation. In fact, the justiza of 
Aragon ha/l poHaesMf-rl much more unlirnife'l powf^rs than oujrlit to \)t- intrus-t'-rl to 
any .-iii{rk; tfiajfi-trat'-. Thf; Court of Kin <;'» IJencli in VA\\i\;\\v\,\»A<\<-* it* conifiat- 
in{» of livf <:'>-<)rilinatt; jiidjjf;*, is cliecked bv tlift appellant juri?«liction-f of the Kx- 
chequer Chamber anr] Hoaac of I^^r(l•^, an<i still more imfjortantly by the rightii of 
juries. 



258 VALENCIA AND CATALONIA. Chap. IV. 

thirty-tliree in those of 1312 ; and as upon both occasions an 
oath of fealty to a new monarch was to be taken, I i:)resume 
that nearly all the nobility of the kingdom were present. The 
ricoshombres do not seem to have exceeded twelve or fourteen 
in number. The ecclesiastical estate was not much, if at all, 
more numerous. A few principal towns alone sent deputies to 
the Cortes ; but their representation was very full ; eight or 
ten, and sometimes more, sat for Saragossa, and no town 
appears to have had less than four representatives. During 
the interval of the Cortes a permanent commission, varying a 
good deal as to numbers, but chosen out of the four estates, 
was empowered to sit with very considerable authority receiv- 
ing and managing the public revenue, and protecting the justi- 
ciary in his functions. 

§ 23. The kingdom of Valencia, and principalit}^ of Cata- 
lonia, having been annexed to Aragon, the one by conquest, 
the other by marriage, were always kept distinct from it in 
their laws and government. Each had its Cortes, composed of 
three estates, for the division of the nobility into two orders 
did not exist in either country. The Catalans were tenacious 
of their ancient usages, and averse to incorporation with any 
other people of Spain. Their national character was high- 
spirited and independent ; in no part of the peninsula did the 
territorial aristocracy retain, or at least pretend to, such ex- 
tensive privileges, and the citizens were justly proud of wealth 
accpiired by industry, and of renown achieved by valor. At 
the accession of Ferdinand I., vv^hich they had not much de- 
sired, the Catalans obliged him to swear three times succes- 
sively to maintain their liberties before they would take the 
reciprocal oath of allegiance. For Valencia it seems to have 
been a politic design of James the Conqueror to establish a 
constitution nearly analogous to tliat of Aragon, but witli such 
limitations as he. should imi)0se, taking care that the nobles of 
the two kingdoms should not acqiure strength by union. 
These three states, Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia, were 
perpetually united by a law of Alfonso III., and every king, 
on his accession, was bound to swear that he would never 
separate them. Sometimes general Cortes of the kingdoms 
and principality were convened ; but the members did not, 
even in this case, sit together, and were no otherwise united 
than as they met in the same city. 

§ 24. I>y the marriage of Ferdinand with Isabella, and by 
the death of John II. in 1479. the two ancient and rival king- 
doms of Castile and Aragon were forever consolidated in the 



Spain. UNION OP^ CASTILE AND ARAGON. 259 

monarchy of Spain. There had been some diiticulty m ad- 
justing the respective rights of the liusband and wife over 
Castile. In the Middle Ages it was customary for the more 
powerful sex to exercise all the rights which it derived from 
the weaker, as much in sovereignties as in private possessions. 
But the Castilians were determined to maintain the positive 
and distinct prerogatives of their queen, to which they at- 
tached the independence of their nation. A compromise, 
therefore, was concluded, by which, though, according to our 
notions, Ferdinand obtained more than a due share, he might 
consider himself as more strictly limited than his father had 
been in Navarre. The names of both were to appear jointly 
in their style and upon the com, the king's taking the prece- 
dence in respect of his sex. But in the royal scutcheon the 
arms of Castile were preferred on account of the kingdom's 
dignity. Isabella had the appointment to all civil offices in 
Castile ; the nomination to spiritual benefices ran in the name 
of both. The government was to be conducted by the two 
conjointly when they were together, or by either singly in 
the province where one or other might happen to reside. 
This partition was well preserved throughout the life of Isabel 
without mutual encroachments or jealousies. So rare an 
unanimity between persons thus circumstanced must be at- 
tributed to the superior qualities of that princess, who, while 
she maintained a constant good understanding with a very 
ambitious husband, never relaxed in the exercise of" her pa- 
ternal authority over the kingdoms of her ancestors. 

§ 25. Ferdinand and Isabella had no sooner quenched the 
flames of civil discord in Castile than they determined to 
give an unequivocal proof to Europe of the vigor whieli tlie 
Spanish monarchy was to display under their government. 
For many years an armistice with the Moors of Granada had 
been uninterrupted. Neither John II. nor Henry IV. had 
been at leisure to think of aggressive hostilities ; and the 
Moors themselves — a i)rey, like their Christian enemies, to 
civil war and the feuds of their royal family — were content 
with the unmolested enjoyment of the finest province in the 
peninsula. If we may trust historians, the sovereigns of 
Granada were generally usurpers and tyrants. But I know 
not how to account for that vast populousness, that grandeur 
and magnificence, which distinguished the Mohammedan king- 
dom of Spain, without ascribing some measure of wisdom and 
beneficence to their governments. These southern provinces 
have dwindled in later times ; and in fact Spain itself is 



260 CONQUEST OF GEANADA. Chap. IV. 

chiefly interesting to many travellers for the monuments 
which a foreign and odious race of conquerors have left be- 
hind them, Granada was, however, disturbed by a series of 
revolutions about the time of Ferdinand's accession, which 
naturally encouraged his designs. The Moors, contrary to 
what might have been expected from their relative strength, 
were the aggressors by attacking a town in Andalusia. Pred- 
atory inroads of this nature had hitherto been only retaliated 
by the Christians. But Ferdinand was conscious that his 
resources extended to the conquest of Granada, the consumma- 
tion of a struggle protracted through nearly eight centuries. 
Even in the last stage of the Moorish dominion, exposed on 
every side to invasion, enfeebled by a civil dissension that led 
one party to abet the common enemy, Granada was not sub- 
dued without ten years of sanguinary and unremitting contest. 
Fertile beyond all the rest of Spain, that kingdom contained 
seventy walled towns ; and the capital is said, almost two cen- 
turies before, to have been peopled by 200,()(>() inhabitants. 
Its resistance to such a force as that of Ferdinand is perhaps 
the best justification of the apparent negligence of earlier 
monarchs. But Granada was ultimately to undergo the yoke. 
The city surrendered on the 2d of January, 1492 — an event 
glorious not only to Spain but to Cliristendom — and wliioh in 
the political combat of the two religions, seemed almost to 
counterbalance the loss of Constantino})le. It raised the name 
of Ferdinand and of the new monarchy which he governed to 
high estimation throughout Europe. Spain a[)peared an equal 
com]>etitor with France in the lists of ambition. These great 
kingdoms liad for some time felt the jealousy natural to em- 
ulous neiglibors. The house of Aragon loudly complained 
of the troachorous ])olicy of Louis XI. He had fomented the 
troubles of Castile, and given, not indeed an cfi'ectual aid, but 
all ])romises of support, to the i)rincess Joanna, the competitor 
of Isabel. Rousillon, a province belonging to Aragon, had 
been pledged to France by Jolin II. for a sum of money. It 
would be tedious to relate "the subsequent events, or to discuss 
tlieir respective claims to its possession. At the accession of 
Ferdinand, Louis XL still held Rousillon, and showed little 
intention to resign it. l>ut Charles VII I., eager to smooth 
every impediment to his Italian expedition, restored the 
province to Ferdinand in 1493. Whether, by such a sacrifice, 
he was able to lull the King of Aragon into acquiescence, 
while he detlironed his relation at Naples, and alarmed for a 
moment all Italy with the apprehension of French dominion, 
it is not witliin the limits of the present work to inquire. 



Gebmant. 



SEPARATIOK FROM FRANCE. 



261 



CHAPTER V. 



HISTORY OF GEKMANY TO THE DIET OF WORMS IN 1495. 



§ 1. Sketch of German Historj'. §2. The Emperors of the House of Snxony. §3. 
House of Franconia. § 4. Lotliaire II., the Saxon. § 5. House of Siiabia. Fred- 
erick Barbarossa. Fall of Henry the Lion. Frederick II. Extinction of House 
ofSuabia. §6. Clianges in the Germanic (Jonstitiition. Electors. Territorial 
Sovereignty of the Princes. § 7. Rodolph of llapshurg. § 8. State of tlie Empire 
after liis Time. Causes of Decline of Imperial Tower. § '.). House of Luxem- 
burg. Charles IV. § 19. House of Austria. Frederick III. § 11. Imperial Cities. 
§ VZ. Provincial States. § 13. Imperial Domain. § 14. Jlaximilian. Diet of 
Worms. Abolition of private Wars. § l.i. Imperial Chamber, § 10. Aulic Coun- 
cil. § 17. Limits of the Empire. § 18. Bohemia. § 10. Hungary. § 20. Switzer- 
land. 

LIST OF EMPERORS DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 



Philip, Otho IV. (rivals). 
Otho IV. 
Frederick XL 

Conrad IV., William (rivals). 
Interregiiuin. 

Richard (Earl of Cornwall). 
Alfonso (King of Castile) 

rivals). 
Rodolph I. (of Ilapsburg). 
Adolphns (of Nassau). 
Albert I. 

Henry VII. (of Luxemburg). 
Louis IV. (of Bavaria). 
(Frederick of Austria, rival). 
Charles IV. 
((Jiinther of Schwartzburg, 

rivals). 
Wenceslaus. 
Rupert. 
Sigismund. 

(Jobst of Moravia, rival). 
Albert II. 
Frederick III. 
Maximilian I. 
Charles V. 

§ 1. After the deposition of Charles the "Fat, wliich finally 
severed the connection between France and Germany, Arnulf^ 



Tear of 
Accesaioc 




Tear of 
Accession 


A. D. 




A. b. 


800 


Charles I. (the Great). 


1198 




Charlemagne. 


1208 


814 


Louis I. (the Pious). 


1212 


840 


Lothaire I. 


1250 


855 


Louis II. 


12.54 


875 


ChaBles II. (the Bald). 


1257 


881 


Charles III. (the Fat). 




S9C) 


Arnulf. 




899 


Louis (the Child). 


1272 


901 


Louis 111. (of Provence). 


1292 


911 (?) Conrad I. 


1298 


915 


Berengar. 


1308 


918 


Henry I. (the Fowler). 


1314 


93(5 


Otho I. (the Great). 




973 


Otho II. 


1347 


983 


Otho III. 




1002 


Henry II. (the Saint). 




1024 


Conrad II. (the Salic). 


1378 


1039 


Henry III. 


1400 


1056 


Henry IV. 


1410 


1106 


Henry V. 




1125 


Lothaire II. (the Saxon). 


1438 


1138 


Conrad III. 


1440 


1152 


Frederick I. (Barbarossa). 


1493 


1190 


Henry VI. 


1519 



262 HOUSE OF SAXONY. Chap. T. ' 

an illegitimate descendant of Charlemagne, obtained the throne 
of the latter country, in which he was succeeded by his son 
Louis. But upon the death of this prince in 911, the German 
branch of that dynasty became extinct. There remained, in- 
deed, Charles the Simple, acknowledged as king in some parts 
of France, but rejected in others, and possessing no personal 
claims to respect. The Germans, therefore, wisely determined 
to choose a sovereign from among themselves. They were at 
this time divided into five nations, each under its own duke, 
and distinguished by difference of laws, as well as origin ; 
(1) the Franks, whose territory, comprising Franconia and the 
modern Palatinate, w^as considered as the cradle of the empire, 
and who seemed to have arrogated some superiority over the 
rest, (2) tlie Suablans, (3) the Bavarians, (4) the Saxons, under 
which name the inhabitants of Lower Saxony alone and West- 
phalia were included, and (5) the Lorrainers, who occupied 
the left bank of the Rhine as far as its termination. The 
choice of these nations in their general assembly fell upon 
Conrad, duke of Franconia, according to some writers, or at 
least a man of high rank, and descended through females from 
Charlemagne (a. d. 911). 

§ 2, House of Saxony. — Conrad dying without male issue, 
the crown of Germany was bestowed upon Henry the Fowler, 
duke of Saxony, ancestor of the three Othos, who followed 
him in direct succession. To Henry, and to the first Otho, 
Germany was more indebted than to any sovereign since 
Charlemagne. The conquest of Italy, and recovery of the 
imperial title, are indeed the most brilliant trophies of Otho 
the Great ; but he conferred far more unequivocal benefits 
upon his OAvn country by completing what his father had be- 
gun, her liberation fi'om the inroads of the Hungarians. Two 
inarches, that of Misnia, erected by Henry the Fowler, and 
that of Austria, by Otho, were added to the Germanic terri- 
tories by their victories. 

A lineal succession of four descents without the least op- 
position seems to show that the Germans were disposed to 
consider their monarchy as fixed in the Saxon family. Otho 
II. and III. had been chosen each in his father's lifetime, and 
during legal infancy. The formality of election subsisted at 
that time in every European kingdom, and the imperfect rights 
of birth required a ratification by public assent. If at least 
France and England were hereditary monarchies in the tenth 
century, the same may surely be said of Germany ; since we 
find the lineal succession fully as well observed in the last as 



Germany. HOUSE OF FltANCONIA. 263 

in the former. But upon the early and unexpected decease of 
Otho III., a momentary op})osition was offered to Henry, duke 
of Bavaria, a collateral branch of the reigning family (a. d. 
1002). He obtained the crown, however, by what contempo- 
rary historians call an hereditary title, and it was not until his 
death, in 1024, that the house of Saxony was deemed to be 
extinguished. 

§ 3. House of Franconia. — No person had now any pre- 
tensions that could interfere with the unbiased suffrages of 
the nation ; and accordingly a general assembly was deter- 
mined by merit to elect Conrad, surnamed the Salic, a noble- 
man of Franconia (a. d. 1024). From this prince sprang three 
successive emperors, Henry III., IV., and V. Perhaps the 
imperial prerogatives over that insubordinate confederacy 
never reached so high a point as in the reign of Henry III., 
the second emperor of the house of Franconia. It had been, 
as was natural, the object of all his predecessors, not only to 
render their throne hereditary, which, in effect, the nation 
was willing to concede, but to surround it with authority 
sufficient to control the leading vassals. These were the 
dukes of the four nations of Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, 
Suabia, and Franconia, and the three archbishops of the 
Rhenish cities, Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, Originally, as 
has been more fully shown in another place, duchies, like 
counties, were temporary governments bestowed at the pleas- 
ure of the crown. From this lirst stage they advanced to 
hereditary offices, and finally to patrimonial fiefs. But their 
progress was much slower in Germany than in France. Under 
the Saxon line of emperors, it appears probable that, although 
it was usual, and consonant to the prevailing notions of equity, 
to confer a duchy upon the nearest heir, yet no positive rule 
enforced this upon the emperor, and some instances of a con- 
trary proceeding occurred. Henry III. put an end altogether 
to the form of popular concurrence, which had been usual 
when the investiture of a duchy was conferred ; and even de- 
posed dukes by the senten-ce of a few princes, without the con- 
sent of the Diet. If we combine with these proofs of authority 
in the domestic administration of Henry III. his almost un- 
limited control over papal elections, or rather the right of 
nomination that he acquired, we must consider him as the 
most absolute monarch in the annals of Germany. 

These ambitious measures of Henry III. prepared fifty 
years of calamity for his son. It is easy to perceive that the 
misfortunes of Henry IV. were primarily occasioned by the 



2G4 HOUSE OF FlvANCONIA. Chap. V. 

jealousy with which repeated viuhitiuns of their constitutional 
usages had inspired the nobility. The mere circumstance of 
Henry IV.'s minority, under the guardianship of a woman, 
was enough to dissipate whatever power his father had ac- 
quired. Through the neglect of his education, Henry grew 
up with a character not well fitted to retrieve the mischief of 
so unprotected a minority; brave indeed, well-natured, and 
affable, but dissolute beyond measure, and addicted to low 
and debauched company. He was soon involved in a desper- 
ate war with the Saxons, a nation valuing itself on its 
populousness and riches, jealous of the house of Franconia, 
who wore a crown that had belonged to their own dukes, and 
indignant at Henry's conduct in erecting fortresses through- 
out their country. 

In the middle of tliis contest another far more memorable 
broke out with the lioman See, concerning ecclesiastical in- 
vestitures (a.d. 1077). The motives of this famous quarrel 
will be ex})lained in a different chapter of the present work. 
Its effect in Germany was ruinous to Henry. A sentence, 
not only of excommunication, but of deposition, which Greg- 
ory VII. pronounced against him, gave a i)retence to all Ifis 
enemies, secret as well as avowed, to withdraw their allegiance. 
At the head of these was Eodolph, duke of Suabia, whom an 
assembly of revolted princes raised to the thi'one. We may 
perceive, in the conditions of liodolph's election, a symptom 
of the real principle that animated the German aristocracy 
against Henry IV. It was agreed that the kingdom should 
no longer be hereditary, not conferred on the son of a reigning 
monarch, unless his merit should challenge the popular appro- 
bation. The pope strongly encouraged this plan of rendering 
the empire elective, by which he hoped either eventually to 
secure the nomination of its chief for the Holy See, or at least, 
by sowing the seed of civil dissensions in Germany, to ren- 
der Italy more independent. Henry IV., however, displayed 
greater abilities in his adversity than his early conduct had 
promised. In the last of several decisive battles, Eodolph, 
though victorious, was mortally wounded ; and nobody cared to 
take up a gauntlet which was to be won with so much trouble 
and uncertainty (a.d. 1080.) The Germans were sufficiently 
disposed to submit ; but Rome persevered in her unrelenting 
hatred. At the close of Henry's long reign she excited against 
him his eldest son, and, after more than thirty years of hos- 
tility, had the satisfaction of wearing him down with misfor- 
tune, and casting out his body, as excommunicated, from its 
sepulchre. 



Gekmany. house of SUABIA. 265 

§ 4. In the reign of his sun Henry V. there is no event 
worthy of much attention, except the termination of the great 
contest about investitures. At his death, in 11U5, the male 
line of the Franconian emperors was at an end. Frederick, 
duke of Suabia, grandson by his mother of Henry IV., had 
inherited their patrimonial estates, and seemed to represent 
their dynasty. But both the last emperors had so many ene- 
mies, and a disposition to render the crown elective jjrevailed 
so strongly among the leading princes, that Lothaire, duke of 
Saxony, was elevated to the throne. Lothaire, who had been 
engaged in a revolt against Henry V., and the chief of a nation 
that bore an inveterate hatred to the house of Franconia, was 
the natural enemy of the new family tliat derived its impor- 
tance and pretensions from that stock. It was the object of 
his reign, accordingly, to oppress the two brothers, Frederick 
and Conrad, of the Hohenstaufen or Suabian family. By 
this means he expected to secure tlie succession of the empire 
for his son-in-law, Henry, surnamed the Proud, who was de- 
scended from a distinguished family, the AVelfs of Altorf, in 
Suabia. From this family he inlierited the duchy of Bavaria. 
The wife of Lothaire transmitted to her daughter the patri- 
mony of Henry the Fowler, consisting of Hanover and Bruns- 
wick. Besides this great dowry, Lothaire bestowed upon his 
son-in-law the duchy of Saxony in addition to that of Bavaria. 

§. 5. House of Suabia, ok Hohenstaufen.^ — This amaz- 
ing preponderance, however, tended to alienate the princes of 
Germany from Lothaii-e's views in favor of Henry. On the 
death of Lothaire, in 1138, the partisans of the house of Suabia 
made a hasty and irregular election of Conrad, in which the 
Saxon faction found itself obliged to acquiesce. The new 
emperor availed himself of the jealousy which Henry the 
Proud's aggrandizement had excited. Under pretence that 
two duchies could not legally be held by the same person, 
Henry was summoned to resign one of them ; and on his re- 
fusal, the Diet pronounced that he had incurred a forfeiture 
of both. Henry made but little resistance, and before liis 
death, which happened soon afterwards, saw himself stri])ped 
of all his hereditary as well as acquired possessions. Upon 
this occasion the famous names of Guelf and Ghibelin were 
first heard, Avhich were destined to keep alive the flame of 
civil dissension in far distant countries, and after their mean- 
ing had been forgotten. The Guelfs, or Welfs, were, as I 

• Hohenstaufen is a castle in what is now the kingdom of Wurtemberg, about four 
miles from the Goppingeu station of the railway from Stuttgart to Ulm. 



266 HOUSE OF ttUABIA. Cuap. V. 

have said, the ancestors of Henry, and the name has become 
a sort of patronymic in his family. The word Ghibelin is 
derived from AVibelung, a town in Franconia, whence the 
emperors of that line are said to have sprung. The house of 
Suabia was considered in Gerjuany as representing that of 
Franconia ; as the Guelfs may, without much impropriety, 
be deemed to represent the Saxon line.. 

Though Conrad III. left a son, the choice of the electors 
fell, at his own request, upon his nephew, Frederick Barba- 
rossa. The most conspicuous events of this great emperor's 
life belong to the history of Italy. At home he was feared 
and respected ; the imperial prerogatives stood as high dur- 
ing his reign as, after their previous decline, it was possible 
for a single man to carry them. But the only circumstance 
which appears memorable enough for the present sketch is 
the second fall of the Guelfs. Henry the Lion, son of Henry 
the Proud, had been restored by Conrad III. to his father's 
duchy of Saxony, resigning his claim to that of Bavaria, 
which had been conferred on the margrave of Austria. This 
renunciation, which indeed was only made in his name dur- 
ing childhood, did not prevent him from urging the Emperor 
Frederick to restore the whole of his birthright ; and Fred- 
erick, his first cousin, whose life he had saved in a sedition at 
Rome, was induced to comply with this request in 1156. 
Far from evincing that political jealousy which some writers 
impute to him, the emperor seems to have carried his gener- 
osity beyond the limits of prudence. For many years their 
union was apparently cordial. But, whether it was that 
Henry took umbrage at part of Frederick's conduct, or that 
mere ambition rendered him ungrateful, he certainly aban- 
doned his sovereign in a moment of distress, refusing to give 
any assistance in that expedition into Lombardy which ended 
in the unsuccessful battle of Legnano. Frederick could not 
forgive this injury, and taking advantage of complaints which 
Henry's power and haughtiness had produced, summoned him 
to answer charges in a general Diet. The duke refused to 
appear, and, being adjudged contumacious, a sentence of con- 
fiscation, similar to that which ruined his father, fell upon his 
head ; and the vast imperial fiefs that he possessed were 
shared among some potent enemies. He made an ineffectual 
resistance : like his father, he appears to have owed more to 
fortune than to nature ; and after three years' exile, was 
obliged to remain content with the restoration of his allodial 
estates in Saxony. These, fifty years afterwards, were con- 



Geiimany. FREDEKICK II. 267 

verted into imperial fiefs, and became the two duchies of the 
house of Brunswick, the lineal representatives of Henry the 
Lion, and inheritors of the name of Guelf. 

Notwithstanding the prevailing spirit of the German oli- 
garchy, Frederick Barbarossa had found no difficulty in ])ro- 
curing the election of his son Henry, even during infant-y, 
as his successor. The fall of Henry the Lion had greatly 
weakened the ducal authority in Saxony and Bavaria ; the 
princes wlio acquired that title, especially in the former 
country, finding that the secular and spiritual nobility of the 
first class had taken the opportunity to raise themselves into 
an immediate dependence upon the empire. Henry VI. came, 
therefore, to the crown, (a.d. 111)0) with considerable advan- 
tages in respect of prerogative; and these inspired him with 
the bold scheme of declaring the empire hereditary. One 
is more surprised to find that he had no contemptible pros- 
pect of success in this attempt ; fifty-two princes, and even 
what appears hardly credible, the See of Rome, under Clem- 
ent III., having been induced to concur in it. But the 
Saxons made so vigorous an opj)Osition that Henry did not 
think it advisable to persevere. He procured, however, the 
election of his son Frederick, an infant only two years old. 
But, the emperor dying almost immediately, a powerful body 
of princes, supported by Pope Innocent III., were desirous 
to withdraw their consent. Philip, duke of Suabia, the late 
king's brother, unable to secure his nephew's succession, 
brought about his own election by one party, while anotlier 
chose Otho of Brunswick, younger son of Henry the Lion 
(a.d. 1198). This double election renewed the rivalry be- 
tween Guelfs and Ghibelins, and threw Germany into con- 
fusion for several years. Philip, whose pretensions ap})ear 
to be the more legitimate of the two, gained ground upon 
his adversary, notwithstanding the opposition of the pope, 
till he was assassinated in consequence of a private resent- 
ment. Otho IV. reaped the benefit of a crime in which he 
did not participate (a.d. 1208), and became for some years 
undisi)uted sovereign. But, having offended the pope by not 
entirely abandoning his imperial rights over Italy, he had, in 
the latter part of his reign, to contend against Frederick, son 
of Henry VI., who, having grown up to manhood, came into 
Germany as heir of the house of Suabia, and, what was not 
very usual in his own history, or that of his family, the favored 
candidate of the Holy See. Otho IV. had been almost entirely 
deserted except by his natural subjects, when his death, in 



268 THE INTERREGNUM. 

1218 removed every difficulty, and left Frederick II. in the 
peaceable possession of Germany. 

The eventful life of Frederick II. was chiefly passed in 
Italy. To preserve his hereditary dominions, and chastise 
the Lombard cities, were the leading objects of his political 
and military career. He paid, therefore, but little attention 
to Germany, from which it was in vain for any emperor to 
expect effectual assistance towards objects of his own. Care- 
less of prerogatives which it seemed hardly worth an effort 
to preserve, he sanctioned the independence of the princes, 
which may be properly dated from his reign. In return, they 
readily elected his son Henry king of the Romans ; and on 
his being implicated in a rebellion, deposed him with equal 
readiness, and substituted his brother Conrad at the em- 
peror's request. But in the latter part of Frederick's reign 
the deadly hatred of Rome penetrated beyond the Alps. 
After his solemn deposition in the council of Lyons, he was 
incapable, in ecclesiastical eyes, of holding the imperial scep- 
tre. William, Count of Holland, was chosen by the party 
adverse to Frederick and his son Conrad; and after the em- 
peror's death he had some success against the latter. It is 
hard, indeed, to say that any one was actually sovereign for 
twenty-two years that followed the death of Frederick II. ; 
a period of contested title and universal anarchy, which is 
usually denominated the grand interregnum (a.d. 1250- 
1272). On the decease of William of Holland, in 1257, a 
scliism among the electors produced the double choice of 
Richard, earl of Cornwall, and Alfonso X., king of Castile. 
It seems not easy to determine which of these candidates had 
a legal majority of votes ; but the subsequent recognition of 
almost all Germany, and a sort of possession evidenced by 
public acts, which have been held valid, as well as the general 
consent of contemporaries, may justify us in adding Richard to 
the imperial list. The choice, indeed, was ridiculous, as he 
possessed no talents which could compensate for his want of 
power ; but the electors attained their objects — to perpetuate a 
state of confusion by which their own independence was consoli- 
dated, and to plunder without scruple a man like Didiusat Rome, 
rich and foolish enough to purchase the first place upon earth. 

§ 6. That place, indeed, was now become a mockery of 
greatness. For more than two centuries, notwithstanding the 
temporary influence of Frederick Barbarossa and his son, the 
imperial authority had been in a state of gradual decay. From 
the time of Frederick II. it had bordered upon absolute insig- 



Gekmany. GERMANIC CONSTITUTION. 269 

nificance ; and the more prudent German princes were slow to 
canvass for a dignity so little accompanied by respect. The 
changes wrought in the Germanic constitution during the 
period of the Suabian emperors cliiefly consist in the establish- 
ment of an oligarchy of electors, and of the territorial sov- 
ereignty of the princes. 

(1.) At the extinction of the Franconian line by the death of 
Henry V. it was determined by the German nobility to make 
their empire practically elective, admitting no right, or even 
natural pretension, in the eldest son of a reigning sovereign. 
Their choice upon former occasions had been made by free and 
general suffrage. But it may be presumed that each nation 
voted unanimously, and according to the disj^osition of its 
duke. It is probable, too, that the leaders, after discussing in 
previous deliberations the merits of the several candidates, 
submitted their own resolutions to the assembly, which would 
generally concur in them witliout hesitation. At the election 
of Lothair, in 1124, we find an evident instance of this previ- 
ous choice, or, as it was called, pra'taxatio7i, from which the 
electoral college of Germany has been derived. In the course 
of the twelfth century the other princes lost all voice in the 
election of the emperor, and the right of pra'taxation was 
conlined to Seven Electors. But it is not easy to account 
for all the circumstances that gave to seven spiritual and tem- 
poral ijrinces this distinguished pre-eminence. The three 
arclibishops, Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, were always, indeed, 
at the head of the German Church. But the secular electors 
should naturally have been the dukes of four nations — Sax- 
ony, Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria. We find, however, only 
the first of these in the undisputed exercise of a vote. It 
seems ])robable tliat, when the electoral princes come to be 
distinguished from the rest, their privilege was considered as 
peculiarly connected with the discharge of one of the great 
offices in the imperial court. These were attached as early as 
the Diet of Mentz in 1184, to the four electors, who afterwards 
possessed them ; the Duke of Saxony having then officiated as 
arch-marshal, the Count Palatine of the Rhine as arch-steward, 
the Jving of Bohemia as arch-cupbearer, and the Margrave of 
Brandenburg as arch-chamberlain of the empire.^ But it still 

2 The names and offices of the seven are eonciselv piven in these lines, which ap- 
pear in the treatise of Marsilius Patavinus, De Imperio Uoiiumo: 

" Mop;untinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis, 
Qullibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum; 
Et Pahifinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis, 
Urarcliio pr:ppositus camera?, pincerna Bohemus, 
Uistatuunt dominum cunctis per sKcula summum." 

liryce's " Holy Roman Empire," p. 258, 



270 GERMANIC CONSTITUTION. Chap. V. 

continues a problem why the three latter offices, with the 
electoral capacity as their incident, should not rather have 
been granted to the dukes of Franconia, Suabia, and Bavaria. 
Tlie final extinction of two great original duchies, Franconia 
and Suabia, in the thirteenth century, left the electoral rights 
of the count palatine and the margrave of Brandenburg beyond 
dispute. But the dukes of Bavaria continued to claim a vote 
in opposition to the kings of Bohemia. At the election of 
Kodolph, in 1272, the two brothers of the house of AVittelsbach 
voted separately, as count palatine and duke of Lower Bavaria. 
Ottocar was excluded upon this occasion ; and it was not till 
12U() that the suffrage of Bohemia was fully recognized. The 
Palatine and Bavarian branches, however, continued to enjoy 
their family vote conjointly, by a determination of llodolph; 
upon which Louis of Bavaria slightly innovated, by render- 
ing the suffrage alternate. But the Golden Bull of Charles IV. 
(a.d. 1356) put an end to all doubts on the rights of electoral 
houses, and absolutely excluded Bavaria from voting. This 
Bull, which became the corner-stone of the German constitu- 
tion, finally ascertained the i)rerogatives of the electoral college. 
The number was absolutely restrained to seven. The place of 
legal imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort ; of coronations, 
at Aix-la-Chapelle ; and the latter ceremony was to be per- 
formed by the archbishop of Cologne. These regulations, 
though consonant to ancient usage, had not always been ob- 
served, and their neglect had sometimes excited questions as to 
the validity of elections. The dignity of elector was enhanced 
by the Golden Bull as highly as an imperial edict could carry 
it ; tliey were declared equal to kings, and conspiracy against 
their persons incurred the j)enalty of high treason. 

(2.) It might appear natural to expect that an oligarchy of 
seven persons, who had thus excluded their equals from all 
share in the election of a sovereign, would assume still greater 
autliority, and trespass furtlier upon the less powerful vassals 
of the empire. But while the electors were establishing their 
peculiar privilege, the class immediately inferior raised itself 
by important acquisitions of power. The German dukes, even 
after they became hereditary, did not succeed in compelling 
the chief nobility within their limits to hold their lands in fief 
so completely as the peers of France had done. The nobles of 
Suabia refused to follow their duke into the field against the 
Emperor Conrad II. Of this aristocracy, the superior class 
were denominated princes ; an a])])ellation wliich, after the 
eleventh century, distinguished them from the untitled uobil- 



Germany. RODOLPH OF HAPSBURG. 271 

ity, most of whom were tlieir vassals. Tliey were constituent 
parts of all Diets ; and tliougli gradually deprived of tlieir 
original participation in electing an emperor, possessed, in all 
other respects, the same rights as the dukes or electors. Some 
of them were fully equal to the electors in birth as well as 
extent of dominions ; such as the princely houses of Austria, 
Hesse, Brunswick, and Misnia. By the division of Henry the 
Lion's vast territories, and by the absolute extinction of the 
Suabian family in the following century, a great many princes 
acquired additional weight. Of the ancient duchies, only Sax- 
ony and Bavaria remained ; the former of which especially 
was so dismembered, that it was vain to attempt any renewal 
of the ducal jurisdiction. That of the emperor formerly exer- 
cised by the counts palatine, went almost equally into disuse 
during the contest between Philip and Otho IV. The princes 
accordingly had acted with sovereign independence within 
their own liefs before the reign of Frederick II. ; but the legal 
recognition of their immunities was reserved for two edicts of 
that emperor ; one, in 1220, relating to ecclesiastical, and the 
other, in 1232, to secular princes. By these he engaged neither 
to levy the customary imperial dues, nor to permit tlie juris- 
diction of the palatine judges, within the limits of a state of 
tlie empire ; concessions that amounted to little less than an 
abdication of his own sovereignty. From this epoch the terri- 
torial independence of the states may be dated. 

A class of titled nobility, inferior to the princes, were the 
counts of the empire, who seem to have been separated from 
the former in the twelfth century, and to h'ave lost at the same 
time their right of voting in the Diets. ^ In some }iarts of Ger- 
many, chiefly in Franconia and upon the Rhine, there always 
existed a very numerous body of lower nobility ; untitled at 
least till modern times, but subject to no superior except the 
emperor. These are su])posed to have become immediate, ^iiev 
the destruction of the house of Suabia, within whose duchies 
they had been comprehended. 

§ 7. A short interval elapsed after the death of Richard of 
Corn Avail before the electors could be induced, by the dejilora- 
ble state of confusion into which Germany had fallen, to All 
the imperial throne. Their clioice was, however, the best that 
could have been made. It fell upon Rodolph, count of Haps- 
burg, a prince of very ancient family, and of considerable pos- 

3 In tlip instruments reliiting to the election of Otho IV. the princes sign their 
names, Ego N. elegi et subscripsi. But the counts only as follows : Ego N. consensi 
et subscripsi. 



272 THE EMPIRE AFTER RODOLPH. Chap. V. 

sessions as well in Switzerland as upon each bank of the 
Upper Rhine, but not sufficiently powerful to alarm the elec- 
toral oligarchy (a.d. 1272). Eoclolph was brave, active, and 
just ; but his characteristic quality appears to have been good 
sense, and judgment of the circumstances in which he was 
placed. Of this he gave a signal proof in relinquishing the 
favorite project of so many preceding emperors, and leaving 
Italy altogether to itself. At home he manifested a vigilant 
spirit in administering justice, and is said to have destroyed 
seventy strongholds of noble robbers in Thuringia and other 
parts, bringing many of the criminals to capital punishment. 
But he wisely avoided giving offence to the more powerful 
princes ; and during his reign there were hardly any rebellions 
in Germany. 

It was a very reasonable object of every emperor to aggran- 
dize his family by investing his near kindred with vacant 
fiefs ; but no one was so fortunate in his opportunities as 
Rodolph. At his accession, Austria, Styria, and Carniola 
were in the hands of Ottocar, king of Bohemia. These exten- 
sive and fertile countries had been formed into a march, or 
margraviate, after the victories of Otho the Great over the 
Hungarians. Frederick Barbarossa erected them into a duchy, 
with many distinguished privileges, especially that of female 
succession, hitherto unknown in the feudal principalities of 
Germany. Upon the extinction of the house of Bamberg, 
which had enjoyed this duchy, it was granted by Frederick II. 
to a cousin of his^ own name ; after whose death a disputed 
succession gave rise to several changes, and ultimately enabled 
Ottocar to gain possession of the country. Against this King 
of Bohemia Rodolph waged two successful Avars, and recovered 
the Austrian provinces, which, as vacant fiefs, he conferred, 
with the consent of the Diet, upon his son Albert. 

§ 8. Notwithstanding the merit and popularity of Rodolph, 
the electors refused to choose his son king of the Romans in 
his lifetime ; and, after his death, determined to avoid the 
appearance of hereditary succession, put Adolphus of Nassau 
upon the throne (a.d. 1292). There is very little to attract 
notice in the domestic history of the empire during the next 
two centuries. From Adolphus to Sigismund every emperor 
had either to struggle against a competitor claiming the 
majority of votes at his election, or against a combination of 
the electors to dethrone him. The imperial authority became 
more and more ineffective ; yet it was frequently made a 
subject of reproach against the emperors that they did not 



Geemany. custom of partition. 273 

maintain a sovereignty to which no one was disposed to 
submit. 

It may appear surprising that the Germanic confederacy 
under the nominal supremacy of an emperor should have been 
preserved in circumstances apparently so calculated to dissolve 
it. But, besides the natural effect of prejudice and a famous 
name, there were sufficient reasons to induce the electors to 
preserve a form of government in which they bore so decided 
a sway. Accident had in a considerable degree restricted the 
electoral suffrages to seven princes. Without tlie college 
there were houses more substantially powerful than any 
within it. 'J'he duchy of Saxony had been subdivided by 
repeated partitions among children, till the electoral right was 
vested in a prince who possessed only the small territory of 
Wittenberg. The great families of Austria, Bavaria, and 
Luxemburg, though not electoral, were the real heads of the 
German body ; and though the two former lost much of their 
influence for a time through the pernicious custom of partition, 
the empire seldom looked for its head to any other house than 
one of these three. 

While the duchies and counties of Germany retained their 
original character of offices or governments, they were of 
course, even though considered as hereditary, not subject to 
partition among children. When they acquired the nature of 
fiefs, it was still consonant to the principles of a feudal tenure 
that the eldest son should inherit according to the law of 
primogeniture ; an inferior provision or appanage, at most, 
being reserved for the younger children. The law of England 
favored the eldest exclusively ; that of France gave him great 
advantages. But in Germany a different rule began to prevail 
about the thirteenth century. An equal partition of the in- 
heritance, without the least regard to priority of birth, was 
the general law of its principalities. Sometimes this was 
effected by undivided possession, or tenancy in common, the 
brothers residing together, and i-eigning jointly. This tended 
to preserve the integrity of dominion ; but as it was frequently 
incommodious, a more usual practice was to divide the terri- 
tory. From such partitions are derived those numeroiis inde- 
pendent principalities of the same house, many of which still 
subsist in Germany. In 1589 there were eight reigning 
princes of the Palatine family ; and fourteen, in 1G75, of that 
of Saxony. Originally tliese partitions were in general abso- 
lute and without reversion, but, as their effect in weakening 
families became evident, a practice was introduced of making 



274 HOUSE OP LUXEMBURG. Chap. V. 

compacts of reciprocal succession, by which a fief was pre- 
vented from escheating to the empire, until all the male pos- 
terity of the first feudatory should be extinct. Thus, while 
the German empire survived, all tlie princes of Hesse or of 
Saxony had reciprocal contingencies of succession, or what our 
lawyers call cross-remainders, to each other's dominions. A 
different system was gradually adopted. By the Golden Bull 
of Charles IV. the electoral territory, that is, the particular 
district to which the electoral suffrage was inseparably at- 
tached, became incapable of partition, and was to descend to 
the eldest son. In the fifteenth century the present house of 
Brandenburg set the first example of establishing primogeniture 
by law ; the principalities of Anspach and Bayreuth were dis- 
membered from it for the benefit of younger branches ; but it 
was declared that all the other dominions of the family should 
for the future belong exclusively to the reigning elector. This 
politic measure was adopted in several other families ; but, 
even in the sixteenth century, the prejudice was not removed, 
and some German princes denounced curses on their posterity, 
if they should introduce the impious custom of primogeniture. 
Notwithstanding these subdivisions, and the most remarkable 
of those which I have mentioned are of a date rather subse- 
quent to the Middle Ages, the antagonist principle of consoli- 
dation by various means of acquisition was so actively at 
Avork that several princely houses, especially those of Holien- 
zollern or Brandenburg, of Hesse, Wirtemberg, and the Palatin- 
ate, derive their importance from tlie same era, the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuri(>s, in which the prejudice against primo- 
geniture was tlie strongest. And thus it will often be found 
in private patrimonies ; the tendency to consolidation of prop- 
erty works more rapidly than that to its disintegration by a 
law of gavelkind. 

§ 9. House of Luxemburg. — Weakened by these subdivis- 
ions, the principalities of Germany in the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries shrink to a more and more diminutive size in 
the scale of nations. But one family, the most illustrious of 
the former age, was less exposed to this enfeebling system. 
Henry VII., count of Li^xemburg, a man of much more per- 
sonal merit than hereditary importance, was elevated to the 
empire in 1308. Most part of his short reign he passed in 
Italy ; but he had a fortunate opportunity of obtaining the 
crown of Bohemia for his son. John, king of Bohemia, did 
not himself wear the imperial crown ; but three of his descend- 
ants possessed it, with less interruption than could have been 



Germany. HOUSE OF LUXEMBURG. 275 

expected. His son Charles IV. succeeded Louis of Bavaria in 
1347 ; not indeed without opposition, for a double election and 
a civil war were matters of course in Germany. Charles IV. 
has been treated with more derision by his contemporaries, 
and consequently by later writers, than almost any prince in 
history ; yet he was remarkably successful in the only objects 
that he seriously pursued. Deficient in personal courage, in- 
sensible of humiliation, bending without shame to the pope, to 
the Italians, to the electors, so poor and so little reverenced as 
to be arrested by a butcher at Worms for want of paying his 
demand, Charles IV. affords a proof that a certain dexterity 
and cold-blooded perseverance may occasionally supply, in a 
sovereign, the want of more respectable qualities. He has 
been reproached with neglecting the empire. But he never 
designed to trouble himself about the empire, except for his 
private ends. He did not neglect the kingdom of Bohemia, to 
which he almost seemed to render Germany a province. Bo- 
hemia had been long considered as a fief of the empire, and 
indeed could pretend to an electoral vote by no other title. 
Charles, however, gave the states by law the right of choosing 
a king, on the extinction of the royal family, which seems de- 
rogatory to the imperial prerogative. It was much more mate- 
rial that, upon acquiring Brandenburg, partly by conquest, 
and partly by a compact of succession in 1373, he not only 
invested his sons with it, which was conformable to usage, but 
tried to annex that electorate forever to the kingdom of ])0- 
hemia. He constantly resided at Prague, where he founded a 
celebrated university, and embellished the city with buildings. 
This kingdom, augmented also during his reign by the acquisi- 
tion of Silesia, he bequeathed to his son Wenceslaus, for wlumi, 
by ])liancy towards the electors and the court of Eome, he had 
procured, against all recent example, the imperial succession. 

The reign of Charles IV. is distinguished in the constitu- 
tional history of the empire by his Golden Bull. (See p. 
270.) The next reign evinced the danger of investing the 
electors with such preponderating authority. Wenceslaus, a 
supine and voluptuous man, less respected, and more negligent 
of Germany, if possible, than his father, was regularly de])osed 
by a majority of the electoral college in 1400. This right, if 
it is to be considered as a right, they had already used against 
Adolphus of Nassau in 1208, and against Louis of Bavaria in 
1346. They cliose Robert count palatine instead of Wences- 
laus ; and though the latter did not cease to have some adher- 
ents, Robert has generally been counted among the lawful 



276 HOUSE OF AUSTRIA. Chap. V. 

emperors. Upon his death the empire returned to the house 
of Luxemburg ; Wenceshius himself waiving his rights in favor 
of his brother Sigismund of Hungary. 

§ 10. The HOUSE OF Austria had hitherto given but two 
emperors to Germany, Rodolph, its founder, and his son 
Albert, whom a successful rebellion elevated in the place of 
Adolphus. Upon the death of Henry of Luxemburg, in 1313, 
Frederick, son of Albert, disputed the election of Louis, duke 
of Bavaria, alleging a majority of genuine votes. This pro- 
duced a civil war, in which the Austrian party were entirely 
Avorsted. Though they advanced no pretensions to the impe- 
rial dignity -during the rest of the fourteenth century, the 
princes of that line added to their possessions Carinthia, Istria, 
and the Tyrol. As a counterbalance to these acquisitions, 
they lost a great part of their ancient inlieritance by unsuc- 
cessful wars with the Swiss. According to the custom of par- 
tition, so injurious to princely houses, their dominions were 
divided among three branches ; one reigning in Austria, a sec- 
ond in Styria and the adjacent provinces, a third in the Tyrol 
and Alsace. This had in a considerable degree eclipsed the 
glory of the house of Hapsburg. But it was now its destiny 
to revive and to enter upon a career of prosperity which has 
never since been permanently interrupted. Albert, duke of 
Austria, who had married Sigismund's only daughter, the 
queen of Hungary and Boliemia, was raised to the imperial 
throne upon the death of his father-in-law in 1438. He died 
in two years, leaving his wife pregnant Avith a son, Ladislaus 
Posthvimus, who afterwards reigned in the two kingdoms just 
mentioned ; and the choice of the electors fell upon Frederick, 
duke of Styria, second-cousin of the last emperor, from whose 
posterity it never departed, excei)t in a single instance, upon 
the extinction of his nuih; line in 1740. 

Frederick III. reigned Hfty-three years (a.d. 1440-1493), a 
longer period than any of his predecessors ; and his ])ers()nal 
character was more insignificant. He reigned during an inter- 
esting age, full of remarkable events, and big with others of 
more leading importance. The destruction of the Greek Em- 
pire, and the ai)pearance of the victorious crescent upon the 
Danube, gave an unlia])])y distinction to the earlier years of 
liis reign, and displayed his mean and pusillanimous character 
in circumstances which demanded a hero. At a later season 
he was drawn into contentions with France and Burgundy, 
wliich ultimately produced a new and more general combina- 
tion of European politics. Frederick, always poor, and scarcely 



Gekmany. FREDERICK III. 277 

able to protect himself in Austria from the seditions of his 
subjects, or the inroads of the King of Hungary, was yet another 
founder of his family, and left their fortunes incomparably 
more prosperous than at his accession. The marriage of his 
son Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy began that ag- 
grandizement of the house of Austria which Frederick seems 
to have anticipated.* The electors, who had lost a good deal 
of their former spirit, and were grown sensible of the necessity 
of choosing a powerful sovereign, made no opposition to Maxi- 
milian's becoming king of the Romans in his father's lifetime. 
The Austrian provinces were re-united either under Frederick 
or in the first years of Maximilian ; so that, at the close of that 
period which we denominate the Middle Ages, the German 
Empire, sustained by the })atrimonial dominions of its chief, 
became again considerable in the scale of nations, and capable 
of preserving a balance between the ambitious monarchies of 
France and Spain. 

§ 11. The period between Rodolph and Frederick III. is 
distinguished by no circumstance so interesting as the pros- 
perous state of the free imperial cities, which had attained 
their maturity about the commencement of that interval. We 
find the cities of Germany, in the tenth century, divided into 
such as depended immediately upon the empire, which were 
usually governed by their bishop as imperial vicar, and such 
as were included in the territories of the dukes and counts. 
Gradually they began to elect councils of citizens, as a sort of 
Senate and magistracy. They were at first only assistants to 
the ini])erial or eitiscopal bailiff, who probably continued to 
administer criminal justice. But in the thirteenth century 
the citizens, grown richer and stronger, either purchased the 
jurisdiction,, or usurped it through the lord's neglect, or drove 
out the bailiff by force. The great revolution in Franconia 
and Suabia occasioned by the fall of the Hohenstaufen family 
com])leted the victory of the cities. Those which had de- 
pended upon mediate lords became immediately connected 
with the empire ; and with the empire in its state of feeble- 
ness, when an occasional present of money would easily induce 
its chief to acqiiiesce in any claims of immunity which the 
citizens might prefer. 

It was a natural consec|;uence of the importance which the 
free citizens had reached, and of their immediacy, that they 

* The famous device of Austria, A. E. I. O. U., was first used by Frederick III. 
who adopted it on his plate, books, and buildings. These initials stand for, Austriae 
Est Imperare Orbi Universe; or, in German, Alles Erdreich Jst Ocsterreieh Unter- 
thau : a bold assumption for a man who was not Safe in an inch of his dominions. 



278 FEEE IMPERIAL CITIES. Chap. V. 

were admitted to a place in the Diets, or general meetings 
of the confederacy. They were tacitly acknowledged to be 
equally sovereign with the electors and princes, and under 
the emperor Henry VII. there is unequivocal mention of the 
three orders composing the Diet — electors, princes, and depu- 
ties from cities. 

The inhabitants of these free cities always preserved their 
respect for the emperor, and gave him much less vexation 
than his other subjects. He was indeed their natural friend. 
But the nobility and prelates were their natural enemies ; 
and the western parts of Germany were the scenes of irrecon- 
cilable warfare between the possessors of fortified castles and 
the inhabitants of fortified cities. Each party was frequently 
the aggressor. The nobles were too often mere robbers who 
lived upon the plunder of travellers. But the citizens were 
almost equally inattentive to the rights of others. It was 
their policy to offer the privileges of burghership to all 
strangers. The peasantry of feudal lords, flying to a neigh- 
boring town, found an asylum constantly open. A multitude 
of aliens, thus seeking, as it were, sanctuary, dwelt in the 
suburbs, or liberties, between the city walls and the palisades 
which bounded the territory. Hence they were called Pfa.hl- 
biirger, or burgesses of the palisades ; and this encroachment 
on the rights of the nobility was positively, bi;t vainly, pro- 
hibited by several imperial edicts, especially the Golden Bull. 
Another class were the Ausbiirger, or outburghers, who had 
been admitted to privileges of citizenship, though resident at 
a distance, and pretended in consequence to be exempted from 
all dues to their original feudal superiors. If a lord resisted 
so unreasonable a claim, he incurred the danger of bringing 
down upon himself the vengeance of the citizens. These out- 
burghers are in general classed under the general name of 
I'fahlbiirger by contemporary writers. 

As tlie towns were conscious of the hatred which the no- 
bility bore towards them, it was their interest to make a 
common cause, and render mutual assistance. They with- 
stood the bishops and barons by confederacies of their own, 
framed expressly to secure their commerce against rapine, 
or unjust exactions of toll. More than sixty cities, with 
three ecclesiastical electors at their head, formed the leagiie 
of the Rhine, in 1255, to repel the inferior nobility, who, hav- 
ing now become immediate, abused that independence by 
j)erpetual robberies. The Hanseatic Union owes its origin to 
uo other cause, and may be traced perhaps to rather a higher 



Gkkmany. FKOVINCIAL STATES. 279 

date. About the year 1370 a league was formed which, 
though it did not continue so long, seems to have produced 
more striking effects in Germany. The cities of Suabia and 
the Rhine united themselves in a strict confederacy against 
the princes, and especially the families of Wirtemburg and 
Bavaria. It is said that the Emperor Wenceslaus secretly 
abetted their projects. The recent successes of tlie Swiss, 
who had now almost established their republic, inspired their 
neighbors in the empire with expectations which the event 
did not realize ; for they were defeated in this war, and ulti- 
mately compelled to relinquish their league. Counter-associa- 
tions were formed by the nobles, styled Society of St. George, 
St. William, the Lion, or the Panther. 

§ 12. Tlie spirit of political liberty was not confined to the 
free immediate cities. In all the German principalities a form 
of limited monarchy prevailed, reflecting, on a reduced scale, 
tlie general constitution of the empire. As the emperors 
sliared their legislative sovereignty witli the Diet, so all the 
princes who belonged to that assembly had their own pro- 
vincial states, composed of their feudal vassals and of their 
mediate towns within tlicir territory. No tax could be im- 
posed without consent of the states ; and, in some countries, 
the prince was obliged to account for the proper distribution 
of the money granted. In all matters of importance affect- 
ing the principality, and especially in case of partition, it was 
necessary to consult them ; and they sometimes decided be- 
tween competitors in a disputed succession, though this indeed 
more strictly belonged to the emperor. The provincial states 
concurred with the prince in making laws, except such as were 
enacted by the general Diet. 

§ 13. The ancient imperial domain, or possessions which 
belonged to the chief of the empire as such, had originally 
been very extensive. Besides large estates in every province, 
the territory upon each bank of the Rhine, afterwards oc- 
cupied by the counts palatine and ecclesiastical electors, was, 
until the thirteenth century, an exclusive property of the 
emperor. This imperial domain was deemed so adequate to 
the support of his dignity that it was usual, if not obliga- 
tory, for him to grant away his patrimonial domains upon his 
election. But the necessities of Frederick II., and the long 
confusion that ensued upon his death, caused the domain to 
be almost entirely dissipated. Rodolph made some efforts 
to retrieve it, but too late; and the poor remains of what 
had belonged to Cliarlemagne and Otho were alienated by 



280 PUBLIC PEACE. Chap. V. 

Charles IV. This produced a necessary change in that part 
of the constitution which deprived an emperor of heredita- 
ry possessions. It was, however, some time before it took 
place. Even Albert I. conferred the duchy of Austria upon 
his son, when he was chosen emperor. Louis of Bavaria 
was the first who retained his hereditary dominions, and made 
them his residence. Charles IV. and Wenceslaus lived almost 
wholly in Bohemia, Sigismund chiefly in Hungary, Frederick 
III. in Austria. This residence in their hereditary countries, 
while it seemed rather to lower the imperial dignity, and to 
lessen their connection with the general confederacy, gave 
them intrinsic power and influence. If the emperors of the 
houses of Luxemburg and Austria were not like the Conrads 
and Fredericks, they were at least very superior in importance 
to the Williams and Adolphnses of the thirteenth century. 

§ 14. The accession of Maximilian nearly coincides with 
the expedition of Charles VIII. against Naples ; and I should 
here close the German history of the Middle Age, were it not 
for the great epoch which is made by the Diet of Worms in 
1495. This assembly is celebrated for the establishment of 
a perpetual pul)lic peace, and of a })aramount court of justice, 
the Ini})erial Cliamber. 

The same causes which produced continual hostilities among 
the French nobility were not likely to operate less powerfully 
on the Germans, equally warlike with their neighbors, and 
rather less civilized. But while the imperial government was 
still vigorous, they were kept under some restraint. We find 
Henry III., the most powerful of the Franconian emperors, 
forbidding all private defiances, and establishing solemnly a 
general peace. After his time the natural tendency of man- 
ners overpowered all attempts to coerce it, and private Avar 
raged without limits in the empire. Frederick I. endeavored 
to repress it by a regulation which admitted its legality. 
This was the law of defiance (^jns d/ffidationis), which required 
a solemn declaration of war, and three days' notice, before the 
commencement of hostile measures. All persons contravening 
tliis provision were deemed robbers and not legitimate enemies. 
War, indeed, legally undertaken, was not the only nor the 
severest grievance. A very large proportion of the rural 
nobility lived by robbery. Their castles, as the ruins still 
bear witness, were erected upon inaccessible hills, and in de- 
files that command the public road. An archbishop of Cologne 
having built a fortress of this kind, the governor inquired how 
he was to maintain himself, no revenue having been assigned 



Gekmany. IMrEUlAL ClIAMBEK. 281 

for that purpose : the prehite only desired him to remark that 
the castle was situated near the junction of four roads. As 
commerce increased, and the example of French and Italian 
civilization rendered the Germans more sensible to their own 
rudeness, the preservation of public peace was loudly de- 
manded. Every Diet under Frederick III. professed to occu})y 
itself with the two great objects of domestic reformation, 
peace and law. Temporary cessations, during which all pri- 
vate hostility was illegal, were sometimes enacted; and, if 
observed, which may well be doubted, might contribute to 
accustom men to habits of greater tranquillity. The leagues 
of the cities were probably more efficacious checks upon the 
disturbers of order. In 1486 a ten years' peace was pro- 
claimed, and before tlie expiration of this period the i)erpetual 
abolition of the right of defiance was happily accomplished in 
the Diet of Worms. 

§ 15. The next object of the Diet was to provide an effect- 
ual remedy for private Avrongs which might supersede all pre- 
tence for taking u}) arms. The Imperial Chamber, such was 
the name of the new tribunal, consisted, at its original institu- 
tion, of a chief judge, who was to be chosen among the princes 
or counts, and of sixteen assessors, partly of noble or eques- 
trian rank, partly professors of law. They were named by 
the emperor with the approbation of the Diet. The functicms 
of the Imperial Chamber were chiefly the two following: (1.) 
They exercised an appellant jurisdiction over causes that had 
been decided by the tribunals established in states of the 
empire. But their jurisdiction in private causes was merely 
appellant. They were positively restricted from taking cog- 
nizance of any causes in the first instance, even where a state 
of the empire was one of the parties. It was enacted, to ob- 
viate the denial of justice that appeared likely to result from 
the regulation in the latter case, that every elector and })rinee 
should establish a tribunal in his own dominions, where suits 
against himself might be entertained. (2.) The second part 
of their jurisdiction related to disputes between two states of 
the em[)ire. But these two could only come before it by way 
of appeal. During the period of anarchy which preceded the 
establishment of its jurisdiction, a custom was introduced, in 
order to prevent the constant recurrence of hostilities, of re- 
ferring the quarrels of states to certain arbitrators, called 
Austregues, chosen among states of the same rank. This con- 
ventional reference became so popular that the princes would 
not consent to abandon it on the institution of the Imperial 



282 LIMITS OF THE EMrillE, Chap. V. 

Chamber ; but, on the contrary, it was changed into an invari- 
able and universal law,, that all disputes between different 
states must, in the tirst instance, be submitted to the arbitra- 
tioa of Austregues. 

Tlie sentences of the Chamber would have been very idly 
prouounced, if means had not been devised to carry them 
into execution. The empire, with the exception of the elect- 
orates aud the Austrian dominioiis, was divided into six circles, 
each of which had its council of states, its director, whose 
pr(jviuce it was to convoke them, and its military force to 
com[>el obedience. lu 1512 four more circles were added, eom- 
prelieuding those states which had been excluded in the first 
division. 

§ l6. As the judges of the Imperial Chamber were ap- 
pointed with the consent of the Diet, and held their sittings 
in a free imperial city, its establishment seemed rather to 
encroach on the ancient prerogatives of the emperors. Max- 
iiailian expressly reserved these in consenting to the new 
tribunal. And, in order to revive them, he soon afterwards 
instituted an Aulic Council at Vienna, composed of judges 
ai)])()iuted by himself, and under the political control of the 
Austrian government. Though some German patriots re- 
garded this tribunal with jealousy, it continued until the 
dissolution of the empire. The Aulic Council had, in all 
cases, a concurrent jurisdiction with the Imperial Chamber; 
an exclusive one in feutlal and some other causes, lint it 
was equally confined to cases of appeal ; and these, by mul- 
ti[)lied privileges, de non appellando, granted to the electoral 
and superior princely houses, were gradually reduced into 
moderate compass. 

The Germanic constitution may be reckoned complete, as 
to all its essential characteristics, in the reign of Maximilian. 
In later times, and especially by the treaty of Westphalia, 
it underwent several modifications. Whatever might be its 
defects, and many of them seem to have been susceptible of 
reformation without destroying the system of government, 
it had one invaluable excellence : it protected the rights of 
the weaker against the stronger powers. The law of nations 
was tirst taught in Germany, and grew out of the public law 
of the empire. To narrow, as far as' possible, the rights of 
war and of conquest, was a natural principle of those who 
belonged to petty states, and had nothing to tempt them in 
amliition. 

§ 17. At the accession of Conrad I., Germany had by no 



Gekmany. constitution OF BOHEMIA. -'83 

means readied its present extent on the eastern frontier. 
Henry the Fowler and the Othos made great acquisitions 
upon that side. But tribes of Schivonian origin, generally 
called Venedic, or, less properly. Vandal, occupied the north- 
ern coast from the Elbe to the Vistula. These were inde- 
pendent and fcjrmidable bcjth to the kings of Denmark and 
princes of Germany, till, in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, 
two of the latter, Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, and Al- 
bert the Bear, margrave of Brandenburg, subdued Mecklen- 
burg and Pomerania, which afterwards became duchies of 
the emjiire. Bohemia was undoubtedly subject, in a feudal 
sense, to Frederick I. and his successors ; though its connec- 
tion with Germany was always slight. The emperors some- 
times assumed the sovereignty over Denmark, Hungary, and 
Poland. But what they gained upon this quarter was com- 
pensated by the gradual separation of the Netlierlands from 
their dominion, and by the still more complete loss of the 
kingdom of Aries. The house of Burgundy possessed most 
part of the former, and paid as little regard as possible to 
the imperial supremacy ; though the German Diets in the 
reign of Maximilian still continued to treat the Netherlands 
as equally subject to their lawful control with the states on 
the right bank of the Ehine. But the provinces between 
the Rhone and the Alps were absolutely separated ; Switz- 
erland had completely succeeded in establishing her own in- 
dependence ; and the kings of France no longer sought even 
the ceremony of an imperial investiture for Dauphine and 
Provence. 

§ 18. Bohemia, which received the Christian faith in the 
tenth century, was elevated to the rank of a kingdom near 
the end of the twelfth. The dukes and kings of Bohemia 
were feudally dependent upon the emperors, from whom they 
received investiture. They possessed, in return, a suffrage 
among the seven electors, and held one of the great offices 
in the imperial court. But separated by a rampart of moun- 
tains, by a difference of origin and language, and perhaps by 
natural prejudices, from Germany, the Bohemians withdrew 
as far as possible from the general politics of the confederacy. 
The kings obtained dispensations from attending the Diets 
of the empire, nor were they able to reinstate themselves in 
the privilege thus abandoned till the beginning of the last 
century. The government of this kingdom, in a very slight 
degree partaking of the feudal character, bore rather a re- 
semblance to that of Poland ; but the nobility were divided 



284 THE HUSSITES. Chap. V. 

into fcAvo classes, the baronial and the equestrian, and the 
burghers formed a third state in the national Diet. For the 
peasantry, they were in a condition of servitude, or 2)redial vil- 
lenage. The royal authority was restrained by a coronation 
oath, by a permanent Senate, and by frecpient assemblies of 
the Diet, where a numerous and armed nobility appeared to 
secure their liberties by law or force. The scejitre passed, 
in ordinary times, to the nearest heir of the royal blood ; but 
the right of election was only suspended, and no king of Bo- 
hemia ventured to boast of it as his inlieritance. This mix- 
ture of elective and hereditary monarchy was common, as we 
have seen, to most European kingdoms in their original con- 
stitution, though few continued so long to admit the participa- 
tion of pf)pular suffrages. 

The reigning dynasty having become extinct in loOG, by the 
death of Wenceshms, son of that Uttocar, who, after extend- 
ing his conquests to the Baltic kSea, and almost to the Adriatic, 
had lost his life in an unsuccessful contention with the 
Emperor Bod(^l]ih, the Bohemians chose John of Luxemburg, 
son of Plenry VII. Under the kings of this family in the 
fourteenth century, and especially Charles IV., whose charac- 
ter appeared in a far more advantageous light in his native 
domains than in the empire, Bohemia imbibed some portion of 
refinement and science. A university erected by Charles at 
Prague became one of the most celebrated in Europe. John 
Huss, rector of the university, who had distinguished himself 
by opposition to many abuses then prevailing in the Church, 
repaired to the council of Constance, under a safe-conduct from 
tiie Emperor Sigismund (a.d. 1410). In violation of this 
pledge, to the indelible infamy of that prince and of the coun- 
cil, he was condemned to be burned ; and his disci})le, Jerome 
of Prague, underwent afterwards the same fate. His country- 
men, aroused by this atrocity, flew to arms. They found at 
their head one of those extraordinary men whose genius, created 
by nature and called into action by f(U'tuitous events, appears 
to borrow no reflected light from that of others. Jolm Zisca 
had not been trained in any school which could have initiated 
him in the science of war ; that indeed, except in Italy, was 
still rude, and nowhere more so than in Boliemia. But self- 
taught, he became one of the greatest captains who had 
hitherto appeared in Europe. It renders liis exploits more 
marvellous that he was totally deprived of sight. Zisca has 
been called tlie inventor of the modern art of fortification ; 
the famous mountain near Prague, fanatically called Tabor, 



Germany. HUNGARY. 285 

became by his skill an impregnable intrencliment. For his 
stratagems he has been compared to Hannibal. In battle, 
being destitnte of cavalry, he disposed at intervals ramparts of 
carriages filled with soldiers, to defend his troops from the 
enemy's horse. His own station was by the chief standard ; 
where, after hearing the circnmstanees of the situation ex- 
plained, he gave his orders for the disposition of the army. 
Zisca was never defeated ; and his genius ins})ired the Hussites 
with such enthusiastic affection, that some of those who had 
served under him refused to obey any other general, and de- 
nominated themselves Or})hans, in commemoration of his loss. 
He was indeed a ferocious enemy, though some of his cruelties 
might, perhaps, be extenuated by the law of retaliation ; but 
to his soldiers affable and generous, dividing among them all 
the spoil. 

Even during the lifetime of Zisca, the Hussite sect was dis- 
united ; the citizens of Prague and many of the nobility con- 
tenting themselves with moderate demands, wliile the Tabor- 
ites, his peculiar followers, were actuated by a most fanatical 
frenzy. The former took the name of Calixtins, from their 
retention of the sacramental cup, of which the priests had 
latterly thought fit to debar laymen ; an abuse so totally Avith- 
out pretence or a])ology, tliat nothing less than the determined 
obstinacy of the Romish Church could have maintained it to 
this time. The Taborites, though no longer led by Zisca, 
gained some remarkable victories, but were at last wholly de- 
feated; while the Catholic and Calixtin parties came to an 
accommodation, by which Sigismund Avas acknowledged as 
King of Bohemia, which he had claimed by the title of heir to 
his brother Wenceslaus, and a few indulgences, especially the 
use of the sacramental cup, conceded to the moderate Hussites 
(a.d. 1433). But this compact, though concluded by the 
Council of Basle, being ill observed, through the perfidious 
bigotry of the See of Rome, the reformers armed again to 
defend their religious liberties, and ultimately elected a noble- 
man of their own party, by name George Podiebrad, to tlie 
throne of Bohemia, which he maintained during his life with 
great vigor and prudence (a.d. 1458). Upon his death they 
chose Wladislaus, son of Casimir, king of Poland (a.d. 1471), 
who afterwards obtained also the kingdom of Hungary. Both 
these crowns were conferred on his son, Louis, after whose 
death in the unfortunate battle of Mohacz, Ferdinand of 
Austria became sovereign of the tAvo kingdoms. 

§ 19. The Hungarians, that terrible people avIio laid waste 



286 HUNGARY. Chap. V. 

the Italian and Gernian provinces of the empire .n the tenth 
century, became proselytes soon afterwards to the religion of 
Europe, and their sovereign, St. Stephen, was admitted by the 
pope into the list of Christian kings. Though the Hungarians 
were of a race perfectly distinct from either the Gothic or the 
Sclavonian tribes, their system of government was in a great 
measure analogous. None indeed could be more natural to 
rude nations who had but recently accustomed themselves to 
settled possessions, than a territorial aristocracy, jealous of 
unlimited or even hereditary power in their chieftain, and sub- 
jugating the inferior people to that servitude which, in such a 
state of society, is the unavoidable consequence of poverty. 

The marriage of a Hungarian princess with Charles II., 
king of Naples, eventually connected her country, far more 
than it had been, with the affairs of Italy. I have mentioned 
in a different place the circumstances which led to the inva- 
sion of Naples by Louis, king of Hungary (see p. 215). By 
marrying the eldest daughter of Louis, Sigismund, afterwards 
emperor, acquired the crown of Hungary, which upon her 
death without issue he retained in his own right, and was even 
able to transmit to the child of a second marriage, and to her 
husband Albert, duke of Austria. From this commencement 
is deduced the connection between Hungary and Austria. In 
two years, however, Albert dying left his widow pregnant ; 
but the states of Hungary, jealous of Austrian influence, and 
of the intrigiies of a minority, without waiting for her delivery, 
bestowed the crown upon Wladislaus, king of Poland (a.d. 
1440). The birth of Albert's posthumous son, Ladislaus, pro- 
duced an opposition in behalf of the infant's right ; but the 
Austrian party turned out the weaker, and Wladislaus, after a 
civil war of some duration, became undisputed king. Mean- 
while a more formidable enemy drew near. The Turkish arms 
had subdued all Servia, and excited a just alarm throughout 
Christendom. Wladislaus led a considerable force, to which 
the presence of the Cardinal Julian gave the appeai'ance of a 
crusade, into Bulgaria, and, after several successes, concluded 
an honorable treaty with Amurath II. But this he was un- 
happily persuaded to violate, at the instigation of the cardinal, 
who abhorred the impiety of keeping faith with infidels. 
Heaven judged of this otherwise, if the judgment of Heaven 
Avas pronounced upon the field of Warna. In that fatal battle 
Wladislaus was killed, and the Hungarians utterly routed (a.d. 
1444). The crown was now permitted to rest on the head of 
young Ladislaus ; but the regency was allotted by the states 



Germany. EARLY HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND. 287 

of Hungary to a native warrior, John Hunniades. This hero 
stood in the breacli for twelve years against the Turkish 
power, frequently defeated, but unconquered in defeat. If 
the renown of Hunniades may seem exaggerated by the ])ar- 
tiality of writers who lived under the reign of his son, it is 
confirmed by more unequivocal evidence, by the dread and 
hatred of the Turks, whose children were taught obedience by 
tlireatening them with his name, and by the deference of a 
jealous aristocracy to a man of no distinguished birth. He 
surrendered to young Ladislaus a trust that he had exercised 
with perfect fidelity ! but his merit was too great to be for- 
given, and the court never treated him with cordiality. The 
last and the most splendid service of Hunniades was tiie relief 
of Belgrade (a.d. 1456). That strong city was besieged by 
Mohammed II. three years after the fall of Cojistantinople ; its 
capture would have laid open all Hungary. A tumultuous 
army, chiefly collected by the preaching of a friar, was in- 
trusted to Hunniades ; he penetrated into the city, and, having 
repulsed the Turks in a fortunate sally wherein IVIohammed 
was wounded, had the honor of compelling him to raise the 
siege in confusion. The relief of Belgrade was more impor- 
tant in its effects than in its immediate circumstances. It re- 
vived the spirits of Europe, which had been appalled by the 
unceasing victories of the infidels. Mohammed himself seemed 
to acknowledge the importance of the blow, and seldom after- 
wards attacked the Hungarians. Hunniades died soon after 
this achievement, and was followed by the king, Ladislaus. 
The states of Hungary, although the Emperor Frederick III. 
had secured to himself, as he thought, the reversion, were 
justly averse to his character, and to Austrian connections. 
They conferred their crown on Matthias Corvinus, son of their 
great Hunniades (a.d. 14r)(S). Tliis prince reigned above 
thirty years with considerable reputation, to which his ])atron- 
age of learned men, wlio rej)aid his munificence with very ])ro- 
fuse eulogies, did not a little contribute. Hungary, at least in 
his time, was undoubtedly formidable to her neighbors, and 
held a respectable rank as an independent power in the re})ub- 
lic of Europe. 

§ 20. Switzerland. — The kingdom of Burgundy or Aries 
comprehended the whole mountainous region which we now 
call Switzerland. It was accordingly reunited to the Ger- 
manic empire by the bequest of Rodolph along with the rest 
of his dominions. A numerous and ancient nobility, vassals 
one to another, or to the empire, divided the possessions with 



288 EARLY HISTORY OF SWITZERLAND. Chap. V. 

ecclesiastical lords liardly less powerful than themselves. Of 
the former we find the counts of Zahringen, Kyburg, Haps- 
burg, and Tokenburg most conspicuous ; of the latter, the 
Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. Gall, and Abbess of Sec- 
kingen. Every variety of feudal riglits was early found and 
long preserved in Helvetia ; nor is there any country Avhose his- 
tory better illustrates tliat ambiguous relation, half property 
and half dominion, in which the territorial aristocracy, under 
the feudal system, stood Avith I'espect to their dependents. In 
the twelfth century the Swiss towns rise into some degree of 
importance. Zurich was eminent for commercial activity, and 
seems to have had no lord but the emperor. Basle, though 
subject to its bishop, possessed the usual privileges of muni- 
cipal government. Berne and Friburg, founded only in that 
century, made a rapid progress, and the latter was raised, 
along with Zurich, by Frederick II., in 1218, to the rank of a 
free imperial city. Several changes in the principal Helvetian 
families took place in the thirteenth century, before the end of 
which the house of Hapsburg, under the politic and enterpris- 
ing Kodolph and his son Albert, became possessed, through 
various titles, of a great ascendency in Switzerland. 

Of these titles none was more tempting to an ambitious 
chief than tliat of advocate to a convent. That sjjecious 
name conveyed with it a kind of indefinite guardiansliip, and 
right of interference, which frequently ended in reversing the 
conditions of the ecclesiastical sovereign and its vassal. But 
during times of feudal anarchy there was perha})S no other 
means to secure the rich abbeys from absolute spoliation; 
and the free cities in their early stage sometimes adopted 
the same policy. Among other advocacies, Albert obtained 
that of some convents which had estates in the valleys of 
Schweitz and Underwald. These sequestered regions in the 
heart of the Alps had been for ages the habitation of a pas- 
toral race, so happily forgotten, or so inaccessible in their 
fastnesses, as to have acquired a virtual independence, regu- 
lating their own affairs in their general assembly with a per- 
fect equality, though they acknowledged the sovereignty of 
the empire. The people of Schweitz had made Kodolph 
their advocate. They distrusted Albert, whose succession 
to his father's inheritance spread alarm through Helvetia. 
It soon appeared that their sus])icions were well founded. 
Besides the local rights Avhich his ecclesiastical advocacies 
gave him over part of the forest cantons, he ])retended, after 
his election to the empire, to send imperial bailiffs into their 



Germany. SWISS CONFEDERACY. 289 

valleys, as administrators of criminal justice. This oppres- 
sion of a people unused to control, whom it was plainly the 
design of Albert to reduce into servitude, excited those gen- 
erous emotions of resentment which a brave and simple race 
have seldom the discretion to repress. Three men, Stauf- 
facher of Schweitz, Furst of Uri, Melchthal of Underwald, 
each with ten chosen associates, met by night in a seques- 
tered held, and swore to assert tlie common cause of their lib- 
erties, without bloodshed or injury to the rights of others. 
Their success was answerable to the justice of their under- 
taking ; the three cantons unanimously took up arms, p,nd 
expelled their oppressors without a contest. All)ert's as- 
sassination by his nephew, which followed soon afterwards, 
fortunately gave them leisure to consolidate their union 
(a.d. 1308). He was succeeded in the empire by Henry VII., 
jealous of the Austrian family, and not at all displeased at 
proceedings which had been accompanied with so little vio- 
lence or disrespect for the empire. But Leopold, duke of 
Austria, resolved to humble the peasants, who had rebelled 
against his father, led a considerable force into tlieir coun- 
try. The Swiss, commending themselves to Heaven, and de- 
termined rather to perish than undAgo that yoke a second 
time, though ignorant of regular discipline, and unprovided 
with defensive armor, utterly discomhted the assailants at 
Morgarten (a.d. I.'JIS). 

Tliis great victory, the Marathon of Switzerland, confirmed 
the independence of the three original cantons. After some 
years, Lucerne, contiguous in situation and alike in interests, 
was incorporated into their confederacy. It was far more 
materially enlarged about the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
tury by the accession of Zurich, Glaris, Zug, and Berne, all 
which took place within two years. The first and last of 
these cities had already been engaged in frequent wars with 
the Helvetian nobility, and their internal polity was alto- 
gether republican. They acquired, not independence, which 
they already enjoyed, but additional security, by this union 
with the Swiss, properly so called, who in deference to their 
power and rejmtation ceded to them the first rank in tlie 
league. The eight already enumerated are called the ancient 
cantons, and continued, till the late reformation of the Hel- 
vetic system, to possess several distinctive privileges and 
even rights of sovereignty over subject territories, in which 
the five cantons of Friburg, Soleure, IJasle, Schaft'hausen, and 
Appenzell did not participate. From this time the united 



290 SWISS CONFEDERACY. ' Chap. V. 

cantons, but especially those of Berne and Zurich, began to 
extend their territories at the expense of the rural nobility. 
The same contest between these ])arties, with the same ter- 
mination, which we know generally to have taken place in 
Lombardy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, may 
be traced with more minuteness in the annals of Switzerland. 
Like the Lombards, too, the Helvetic cities acted with policy 
and moderation towards the nobles whom they overcame, 
admitting them to the franchises of their community as co- 
burghers (a })rivilege Avhich virtually implied a defensive 
alliance against any assailant), and uniformly respecting the 
legal rights of property. Many feudal superiorities they ob- 
tained from the owners in a more peaceable manner, through 
purchase or mortgage. Thus the house of Austria, to which 
the extensive domains of the counts of Kyburg had devolved, 
abandoning, after repeated defeats, its hopes of subduing the 
forest cantons, alienated a great part of its possessions to 
Zurich and Berne And the last remnant of their ancient 
Helvetic territories in Argovia was wrested, in 1417, from 
Frederick, count of Tyrol, who, imprudently supporting Pope 
John XXIII. against the Council of Constance, had been put 
to the ban of the empfre. These conquests Berne could not 
be induced to restore, and thus com])leted the independence of 
the confederate republics. The other free cities, tliough not 
yet incorporated, and the few remaining nobles, whether lay 
or sjjiritual, of whom the Abbot of St. Gall was the principal, 
entered into separate leagues with different cantons. Switzer- 
land became, therefore, in the first part of the fifteenth cen- 
tury a free country, acknowledged as such by neighboring 
states and subject to no external control, though still compire- 
hended within the nominal sovereignty of the empire. 

The affairs of Switzerland occupy a very small space in the 
great chart of European history. But in some respects they 
are more interesting than the revolutions of mighty kingdoms. 
Nowhere besides do we find so many titles to our sympathy, 
or the union of so much virtue with so comj^lete success. In 
the Italian re})ublics a more splendid temple may seem to 
have been erected to liberty ; but, as we a[)i)roach, the ser- 
pents of faction hiss around her altar, and the form of tyranny 
flits among the distant shadows behind the shrine. Switzer- 
land, not absolutely blameless (for what re})ublic has been 
so?), but comparatively exempt from turbulence, usurpation, 
and injustice, has well deserved to emi)loy the native pen of 
an historian accounted the most eloquent of tlie last age, 



I 



Germany. SWISS TEOOPS. 291 

Juliaun Muller. Other nations iisplayed an insuperable reso- 
lution in the defence of walled towns ; but the steadiness of 
the Swiss in the field of battle was without a parallel, unless 
we recall the memory of Lacedsemon. It was even established 
as a law that Avhoever returned from battle after a defeat 
should forfeit his life by the hands of the executioner. Six- 
teen hundred men, who had been sent to oppose a predatory 
invasion of the French in 1444, though they might have re- 
treated without loss, determined rather to perish on the spot, 
and fell amidst a far greater heap of the hostile slain. At the 
famous battle of Sempach in 1385, the last which Austria 
presumed to try against the forest cantons, the enemy's 
knights, dismounted from their horses, presented an impreg- 
nable barrier of lauces, which disconcerted the Swiss ; till 
Winkelried, a gentleman of Underwald, commending his wife 
and children to his countrymen, threw himself upon the oj^po- 
site ranks, and, collecting as many lances as he could gras]), 
forced a passage for his followers by burying them in his 
bosom. 

The burghers and peasants of Switzerland, ill provided with 
cavalry, and better able to dispense with it than the natives of 
champaign countries, may be deemed the principal restorers 
of the Greek and Roman tactics, which place the strength of 
armies in a steady mass of infantry. Besides their splendid 
victories over the dukes of Austria and their own neighboring 
nobility, they had repulsed, in the year 1375, one of those 
predatory bodies of troops, the scourge of Europe in that age, 
and to whose licentiousness kingdoms and free states yielded 
alike a passive submission. They gave the dauphin, after- 
wards Louis XL, who entered their country in 1444 with a 
similar body of ruffians, called Armagnacs, the disbanded 
mercenaries of the English war, sufficient reason to desist 
from his invasion and to respect their valor. That able 
prince formed, indeed, so high a notion of the Swiss, that he 
sedulously cultivated their alliance during the rest of his life. 
He was made abundantly sensible of the wisdom of this 
policy when he saw his greatest enemy, the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, routed at Granson and Morat, and his affairs irrecover- 
ably ruined, by these hardy republicans. The ensuing age is 
the most conspicuous, though not the most essentially glorious, 
in the history of Switzerland. Courted for the excellence of 
their troops by the rival sovereigns of Europe, and themselves 
too sensible both to ambitious schemes of dominion and to the 
thirst of money, the united cantons came to play a very prom- 



292 SWISS INDEPENDENCE. Chap. V. 

inent part in the wars of Lombardy, Avith great military re- 
nown, but not without some impeachment of that sterlino- 
probity which had distinguished their earlier efforts for inde- 
pendence. These events, however, do not fall within my 
limits ; but the last year of the fifteenth century is a leading 
epoch, with which I shall close this sketch. Though the 
house of Austria had ceased to menace the liberties of Hel- 
vetia, and had even been for many years its ally, the Emperor 
Maximilian, aware of the important service he might derive 
from the cantons in his projects upon Italy, as well as of the 
disadvantage he sustained by their partiality to French in- 
terest, endeavored to revive the unextinguished supremacy of 
the empire. That supremacy had just been restored in Ger- 
many by the establishment of the Imperial Cliamber, and of a 
regular pecuniary contribution for its support, as well as for 
other purposes, in the Diet of Worms. The Helvetic cantons 
were summoned to yield obedience to these imperial laws ; an 
innovation, for such the revival of obsolete prerogatives must 
be considered, exceedingly hostile to their republican indepen- 
dence, and involving consequences not less material in their 
eyes, the abandonment of a line of policy which tended to en- 
rich, if not to aggrandize them. Their refusal to comply 
brought on a war, wherein the Tyrolese subjects of Maximiliah, 
and the Suabian league, a confederacy of cities in that prov- 
ince lately formed under the emperor's auspices, were princi- 
pally engaged against the Swiss. But the success of the 
latter was decisive; and after a terrible devastation of the 
frontiers of Germany, ])eace was concluded upon terms very 
honorable for Switzerland. The cantons were declared free 
from the jurisdiction of the Imperial Chamber, and from all 
contributions imposed by the Diet. Their right to enter into 
foreign alliance, even hostile to the empire, if it was not ex- 
pressly recognized, continued unimpaired in practice ; nor am 
I aware that they were at any time afterwards supposed to 
incur the crime of rebellion by such proceedings. Though, 
perhaps, in the strictest letter of public law, the Swiss cantons 
were not absolutely released from their subjection to the 
empire imtil the treaty of AVestphalia, their real sovereignty 
must be dated by an historian from the year when every prerog- 
ative which a government can exercise was finally abandoned. 



Gbeeks.Etc. commencement OF MODERN HISTORY. 293 



CHAPTER VI. 

HISTORY OF THE GREEKS AND SARACENS. 

§ 1. Rise of Mohammedism. § 2. Progress of Saracen Arms. § 3. Greek Empire. 
Decline of the Calii)hs. § 4. The Greeks recover Part of their Losses § 5. Tlie 
Turks. § 6. The Crusades. Capture of Constantinople by the Latins. Its Recov- 
ery by the Greeks. § 7. The Moguls. Tlie Ottoiiiaus. Timur. § 8. Capture of 
Constantinople by Mohammed II. §9. Alarm of Europe. 

§ 1. The difficulty which occurs to us in endeavoring to 
fix a natural commencement of modern history even in the 
Western countries of Europe is much enhanced when we direct 
our attention to the Eastern Empire. But the ap[)earance of 
Mohammed, and the concj^uests of his disciples, present an 
epoch in the history of Asia still more important and more 
definite than the subversion of the Roman Empire in Europe ; 
and hence the boundary line between the ancient and modern 
divisions of Byzantine history will intersect the reign of 
Heraclius. That prince may be said to have stood on the 
verge of both hemis[)heres of time, whose youth was crowned 
with the last victories over the successors of Artaxerxes, and 
whose age was clouded by the first calamities of Mohammedan 
invasion.^ 

The ]n"evalence of Islam in the lifetime of its prophet, and 
duriug the first ages of its existeuce, was chiefly owing to the 
spirit of martial energy tliat he infused into it. The religion 
of Mohammed is as essentially a military system as the institu- 
tion of chivalry in the west of Europe. The peo})le of Aral)ia, 
a race of strong passions and sanguinary temper, inured to 
habits of pillage and murder, found in the law of their native 
prophet not a license, but a command, to desolate tlie world, 
and the promise of all that their glowing imaginations could 
anticipate of Paradise annexed to all in which they most de- 
lighted upon earth. Death, slavery, tribute, to unbelievers, 
were the glad tidings of the Arabian prophet. To the idol- 
aters, indeed, or those who acknowledged no special revelation, 
one alternative only was proposed, conversion or the sAvord. 

1 For a fuller account of the events, briefly narrated in this chapti-r. see " Stu- 
dent's Gibbon," cli. xxy'ii., seq. 



294 STATE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE. Chap. VI. 

The people of the Book, as they are termed in the Koran, or 
four sects of Christians, Jews, Magians, and Sabians, were 
permitted to redeem their adherence to their ancient law by 
the payment of tribute, and other marks of humiliation and 
servitude. But the limits which Mohammedan intolerance 
had prescribed to itself were seldom transgressed ; the word 
l)ledged to unbelievers was seldom forfeited ; and wdth all their 
insolence and oppression, the Moslem conquerors were mild 
and liberal in comparison with those who obeyed the pontiffs 
of Rome or Constantinople. 

§ 2. At the death of Mohammed in 632 his temporal and 
religious sovereignty embraced, and was limited by, the 
Arabian peninsula. The Roman and Persian empires, en- 
gaged in tedious and indecisive hostility upon the rivers of 
Mesojjotamia and the Armenian mountains, were viewed by 
the ambitious fanatics of his creed as their quarry. In the 
very lirst year of Mohammed's immediate successor, Abu- 
beker, each of these mighty empires Avas invaded. The lat- 
ter opposed but a short resistance. The crumbling fabric 
of Eastern despotism is never secure against rajjid and total 
subversion ; a few victories, a few sieges, carried the Arabian 
arms from the Tigris to the Oxus, and overthrew, with the 
Sassanian dynasty, the ancient and famous religion they had 
professed. Seven years of active and unceasing wai-fare suf- 
ficed to subjugate the rich province of Syria, though defended 
by numerous armies and fortified cities (a.d. ()32-6."j9) ; and 
the caliph Omar had scarcely returned thanks for the accom- 
plishment of this conquest, when Amrou, his lieutenant, an- 
nounced to him the entire reduction of Egy])t. After some 
interval the Saracens won their way along the coast of Africa 
as far as the I'illars of Hercules, and a third province was ir- 
retrievably torn from the Greek erai)ire (a.d. C47-698). These 
Western conquests introduced them to fresh enemies, and 
ushered in more splendid successes ; encouraged by the dis- 
union of the Visigoths, and perhajis invited by treachery, 
Musa, the general of a master who sat beyond the opposite 
extremity of the IVIediterranean Sea, passed over into Spain, 
and Avithin about two years the name of JNIohammed was in- 
voked under the Pyrenees (a.d. 710). 

§ 3. These conqiiests, wliich astonish the careless and 
superficial, are less per])lexing to a calm inquirer than their ces- 
sation ; the loss of half the Roman Empire, than the pres- 
ervation of the rest. The fame of Heraclius had withered 
in the Syrian war ; and his successors ai)peared as incapable 



GitKEKS, Etc. CALirilS OF BAGDAD. 295 

to resist as they were unworthy to govern. But this de- 
praved people were preserved from destruction by the vices 
of their enemies, still more than by some intrinsic resources 
which they yet possessed. A rapid degeneracy enfeebled 
the victorious Moslem in their career. That irresistible en- 
thusiasm, that earnest and disinterested zeal of the com])an- 
ions of Mohammed, was in a great measure lost, even before 
the first generation had passed away. In the fruitful val- 
leys of Damascus and Bassora the Arabs of the desert forgot 
their abstemious habits. Rich from the tributes of an en- 
slaved people, the Mohammedan sovereigns knew no em})loy- 
ment of riches but in sensual luxury, and paid the price of 
volnptiious indulgence in the relaxation of their strength and 
energy. Under the reign of Moawiah, the fifth caliph, an he- 
reditary succession was substituted for the free choice of the 
faithful, by which the first representatives of the prophet 
had been elevated to power ; and this regulation, necessary, 
as it plainly was, to avert in some degree the dangers of 
schism and civil war, exposed the kingdom to the certainty 
of being often governed by feeble tyrants. But no regulation 
could be more than a temporary preservative against civil 
war. The dissensions which still sey)arate and render hostile 
the followers of Mohammed may be traced to the first events 
that ensued upon his death, to the rejection of his son-in-law 
Ali by the electors of Medina. Two reigns, those of Abu- 
beker and Omar, passed in external glory and domestic rev- 
erence ; but the old age of Othman was weak and imprudent, 
and the cous})irators against him established the first among a 
hundred precedents of rebellion and regicide. Ali was now 
chosen ; but a strong faction disputed his right ; and the 
Saracen empire was, for many years, distracted with civil war, 
among competitors who appealed, in reality, to no other decis- 
ion than that of the sword. The family of Ommiyah succeeded 
at last in establishing an unresisted, if not an undoubted, title. 
But rebellions were perpetually afterwards breaking out in 
that vast extent of dominion, till one of these revolters ac- 
quired by success a better name than rebel, and founded the 
dynasty of the Abbassides (a.d. 750). 

Damascus had been the seat of empire under the Ommi- 
ades ; it was removed by the succeeding family to their new 
city of Bagdad. There are not any names in the long line 
of caliphs, after the companions of Mohammed, more re- 
nowned in history than some of the earlier sovereigns who 
reigned in this capital — Almansor, Haroun Alraschid, and 



29G DECLINE OF THE CALiniS. Cuap. VI. 

Alinumtiii. Their splendid ])alaces, their numerous guards, 
their treasures of gold and silver, the i)opulousness and 
wealth of their cities, fornii d a striking contrast to the rude- 
ness and poverty of the Western nations in the same age. 
In their court, learning, which the first Moslem had des})ised 
as unwarlike or rejected as profane, was held in honor. The 
Caliph Abnamtin especially was distinguished for his pat- 
ronage of letters ; the philosophical writings of Greece were 
eagerly sought and translated; the stars Avere numbered, 
the course of the planets was measured. The Arabians im- 
])roved ui)on the science they borrowed, and returned it with 
abundant interest to Euroj)e in the communication of numeral 
figures and the intellectual language of algebra. Yet the 
merit of the Abbassides has been exaggerated by adulation or 
gratitude. After all the vague praises of hireling poets, which 
have sometimes been rejjeated in Europe, it is very rare to 
read the history of an Eastern sovereign unstained by atrocious 
crimes. No Christian government, exce})t perha])s that of 
Constantinople, exhibits such a series of tyrants as the caliphs 
of Bagdad, if deeds of blood, wrought through unbridlrd 
passion or jealous policy, may challenge the name of tyr- 
anny. 

Though the Abbassides have acquired more celebrity, they 
never attained the real strength of their predecessors. tJnder 
the last of the house of Ommiyah, one command was obeyed 
almost along the whole diameter of the known world, from the 
banks of the Sihon to the utmost promontory of Portugal. But 
the revolution which changed the succession of cali})lis pro- 
duced another not less im[)ortant. A fugitive of the van- 
(juished family, by name Abdalrahman, arrived in Spain ; and 
the ]\Ioslem of that country, not sharing in the prejudices Avhich 
had stirred n\) the Persians in favor of the line of Abbas, and 
conscious that their remote situation entitled them to indepen- 
dence, })roclaimed him Caliph of Cordova. There could be 
little hope of reducing so distant a dependency ; and the 
example was not unlikely to be imitated. In the reign of 
Haroun Alraschid two principalities were formed in Africa — 
of the Aglabites, who reigned over Tunis and Tripoli; and of 
the Edris'ites, in the western jjarts of Barbary. These yielded 
in about a century to the Fatimites, a more powerful dynasty, 
Avho afterwards established an empire in Egypt. 

The h)ss, however, of Spain and Africa was the inevitable 
effect of that immensely extended dominion, which their sepa- 
ration alone would not have enfeebled. But other revolutions 



Gkeeks, Etc. FATAL POLICY. 297 

awaited it at home. In tlie history of the Abbassides of Bag- 
dad we read over again the decline of European monarchies, 
through their various systems of ruin ; and tind successive 
analogies to the insults of the barbarians towards imperial 
Home in the fifth century, to the ])ersonal insignihcance of the 
Merovingian kings, and to the feudal usurpations that dismem- 
bered the inheritance of Charlemagne. 1. Beyond the north- 
eastern frontier of the Saracen empire dwelt a warlike and 
})0\verful nation of the Tartar family, who defended the inde- 
Ijendence of Turkestan from the Sea of Aral to the great cen- 
tral chains of mountains. In the wars which the caliphs or 
their lieutenants waged against them many of these Turks 
were led into cg,ptivity, and dis})ersed over the em|)ire. Their 
strength and courage distinguished them among a peo})le 
grown effeminate by luxury ; and that jealousy of disaffection 
among his subjects so natural to an Eastern monarch might be 
an additional motive with the Caliph Motassem to form 
bodies of guards out of these prisoners. But his policy was 
fatally erroneous. More rude and even more ferocious than 
the Arabs, they contemned the feebleness of the caliphate, 
while they grasped at its riches. The son of Motassem, Mot- 
awakkel, was murdered in his palace by the barbarians of the 
North ; and his fate revealed the secret of the empire, that the 
choice of its sovereign had passed to their slaves. Degradation 
and death were frequently the lot of succeeding caliphs; but 
in the East the son leaps boldly on the throne which the blood 
of his father had stained, and the })r8etorian guards of Bagdad 
rarely failed to render a fallacious obedience to the nearest 
heir of the house of Abbas. 2. In about one hundred years 
after the introduction of the Turkish soldiers the sovereigns of 
Bagdad sunk almost into oblivion. Al Eadi, who died in 940, 
was the last of these that officiated in the mosque, that com- 
manded the forces in person, that addressed the people from 
the pul})it, that enjoyed the })omp and splendor of royalty. 
But he was the first who appointed, instead of a vizier, a new 
officer — a mayor, as it were, of the palace — with the title of 
Emir al Omra, commander of commanders, to whom he dele- 
gated by compulsion the functions of his office. This title was 
usually seized by active and martial spirits ; it was sometimes 
hereditary, and in effect irrevocable by the caliphs, whose 
names hardly ap})ear after this time in Oriental annals. 3. 
During these revolutions of the palace every province succes- 
sively shook oft' its allegiance ; new principalities were formed 
in Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as in Ivhorassan and Persia, 



298 REVIVAL OF THE GREEK EMPIRE. Chap. VI. 

till the dominion of the Commander of the Faithful was liter- 
ally confined to the city of Bagdad and its adjacent territory. 
For a time some of these princes, who had been ap})ointed as 
governors by the caliphs, ])rofessed to respect his supremacy 
by naming him in the public jn-ayers and upon the coin ; but 
these tokens of dependence were gradually obliterated. 

§ 4. Such is the outline of Saracenic history for three cen- 
turies after Mohammed ; one age of glorious conquest ; a 
second of stationary, but rather precarious, greatness ; a third 
of rapid decline. The Greek empire meanwhile survived, and 
almost recovered from the shock it had sustained. The posi- 
tion of Constantinople, chosen with a sagacity to which the 
course of events almost gave the appearance^ of prescience, 
secured her from any immediate danger on the side of Asia, 
and rendered her as little accessible to any enemy as any city 
which valor and patriotism did not protect. Yet in the days 
of Arabian energy she was twice attacked by great naval arm- 
aments. The first siege, or rather blockade, continued for 
seven years (a.d. 668-G75) ; the second, though shorter, was 
more terrible, and her walls, as well as her port, were actually 
invested by the combined forces of the Caliph Waled, under 
his brother Moslema (a.d. 71G-718). The final discomfiture 
of these assailants showed the resisting force of the empire, or 
rather of its capital ; but perhaps the abandonment of such 
maritime enterprises by the Saracens may be in some measure 
ascribed to the removal of their metropolis from Damascus to 
Bagdad. But the Greeks in their turn determined to dispute 
the" command of the sea. By possessing the secret of an inex- 
tinguishal)le fire, they fought on sujjerior terms : their wealth, 
l)erha})s their skill, enabled them to employ larger and better 
ai)pointed vessels ; and they ultimately exijelled their enemies 
from the islands of Crete and Cyprus. By land they were less 
desirous of encountering the Moslem. But the increasing dis- 
tractions of the East encouraged two brave usurpers, Nicepho- 
rus Phocas and John Zimisces to attempt the actual recovery 
of the lost provinces (a.d. 903-975). They carried the Koman 
arms (one may use the term with less reluctance than usual) 
over Syria ; Antioch and Aleppo were taken by storm ; Damas- 
cus submitted; even the cities of Mesopotamia, beyond the 
ancient boundary of the Euphrates, were added to the trophies 
of Zimisces, who unwillingly spared the capital of the caliph- 
ate. From such distant conquests it was expedient, and indeed 
necessary, to withdraw ; but Cilicia and Antioch were perma- 
nently restored to the empire. At the close of the tenth, century 



GbekivS, Etc. liEVIVAL OF THE GlIEEK EiMPIUE. 299 

the emperors of Constantinople possessed the best and greatest 
portion of the modern king'dom of Naples, a part of ^Sicily, the 
whole European dominions of the Ottomans, the province of 
Anatolia or Asia Minor, with some part of Syria and Armenia. 

§ o. These successes of the Greek empire were certainly 
much rather due to the weakness of its enemies than to any 
revival of national courage and vigor ; yet they would j^robably 
have been more durable if the contest had been only with the 
caliphate, or the kingdoms derived from it. But a new actor 
was to apjjear on the stage of Asiatic tragedy. The same 
Turkish nation, the slaves and captives from which had be- 
come arbiters of the sceptre of Bagdad, passed their original 
limits of the laxartes or Sihon. The sultans of Ghazna., a 
dynasty whose si)lendid conquests were of very short duration, 
had deemed it politic to divide the strength of these formidable 
allies by inviting a part of them into Khorassan. Tliey cov- 
ered that fertile province with their pastoral tents, and beck- 
oned tliei)- compatriots to share the riches of the South. The 
Ghaznevides fell the earliest victims (a.d. 1038) ; but Persia, 
violated in turn by every conqueror, Avas a tempting and un- 
resisting prey. Togrol Bek, the founder of the Seljukian dy- 
nasty of Turks, overthrew the family of Bowides, wlio had 
long reigned at Is^jahan, respected the i)ageant of Mohamme- 
dan sovereignty in the Caliph of Bagdad, embraced, witli all 
his tribes, the religion of the van(|uished, and commenced the 
attack upon Christendom by an irruption into Armenia (a.d. 
1038-lOGo). His nephew and successor. Alp Arslan, defeated 
and took prisoner the Em})eror Romanus Diogenes (a.d. 1071); 
and the conquest of Asia INIinor was almost completed by 
princes of the same family, the Seljukians of llum,^ who were 
permitted by Malek Shah, the third sultan of the Turks, to 
form an independent kingdom, of Avhich Iconium Avas the 
capital. Through their own exertions, and the sellish impolicy 
of rival competitors for the throne of Constantinople, who 
bartered the strength of the empire for assistance, the Turks 
became masters of the Asiatic cities and fortified passes ; nor 
did there seem any obstacle to the invasion of Eurojje. 

§ G. In this state of jeopardy, the Greek Em})ire looked for 
aid to the nations of the West, and received it in fuller meas- 
ure than was expected, or perhaps desired. The deliverance 
of Constantinople was, indeed, a very secondary object with 
the crusaders. But it was necessarily included in their scheme 
of operations, which, though they all tended to the recovery 

2 RQm, i.e., country of tlie Konians. 



000 C02s'QUEttT« OV TUE TURKS. CuAP. VI. 

of Jerusalem, must commence witli the first enemies that lay 
on their line of march. The Turks were entirely defeated, 
their capital of Nice restored to the empire. As the Franks 
passed onward, the Emperor Alexius Comnenus trod on their 
footsteps, and secured to himself the fruits for which their en- 
thusiasm disdained to wait. He regained possession of the 
strong ])laces on the ^gean shores, of the defiles of Bithynia, 
and of the entire coast of Asia Minor, both on the Euxine and 
Mediterranean seas, which the Turkish armies, composed of 
cavalry and unused to regular warfare, could not recover. So 
much must undoubtedly be ascribed to the first crusade. But 

1 taink that the general effect of these expeditions has been 
overrated by those who consider them as having permanently 
retarded the progress of the Turkish ])ower. The Christians 
in I'alestine and Syria were hardly in contact with the Sel- 
jukian kingdom of Rum, the only enemies of the empire. 
'( )ther causes are adecjuate to ex])lain the equipoise in which 
the balance of dominion in Anatolia Avas kept during the twelfth 
century ; the valor and activity of the two Comneni, John and 
Manuel, especially the former ; and the frequent partitions 
and internal feuds, through which the Seljukians of Iconium, 
like all other Oriental governments, became incapable of 
foreign aggression. 

But whatever obligation might be due to the first crusaders 
from the Eastern Empire was cancelled by their descendants 
one hundrinl years afterwards, when the fourth in numV-er of 
those expeditions was turned to the subjugation of Constanti- 
nople its(4f. One of those domestic revolutions which occur 
periietually in Byzantine history had placed an usurper on the 
imperial tlirone. The lawful monarch was condemned to 
l)lindness and a prison; but the heir escaped to recount his 
misfortunes to the fleet and army of crusaders assembled in 
the Dalmatian port of Zara. This armament had been col- 
lected for the usual purposes, and through the usual motives, 
temporal and spiritual, of a crusade; the military force 
chiefly consisted of French nobles ; the naval Avas sup})lied by 
the Republic of Venice, whose doge commanded personally in 
the expedition. It was not, apparently, consistent with the 
primary object of retrieving the Christian affairs in Palestine 
to interfere in the government of a Christian empire ; but the 
temptation of punishing a faithless people, and the hoj)e of 
assistance in their subsequent operations, prevailed. They 
turned their prows up the Archipelago, and notwithstanding 
the vast population and defensible strength of Constantinople, 



Greeks, Etc. PARTITION OF THE EMPIRE. oOl 

comi)elled. the usurper to fly, and tlie citizens to surrentler. 
But animosities springing from religious schism and national 
jealousy were not likely to be allayed by such remedies ; the 
Greeks, wounded in their pride and bigotry, regarded the 
legitimate emperor as a creature of their enemies, ready to 
sacrifice their Church, a sti})ulated condition of his restoration, 
to that of liome. In a few months a iicav sedition and con- 
spiracy raised another usurper in defiance of the crusaders' 
army encamped without the walls. The siege instantly re- 
commenced, and after three months the city of Constantinople 
was taken by storm (a.d. 1204). 

The lawful emperor and his son had peiished in the rebel- 
lion that gave occasion to this catastroi)he, and there remained 
no right to interfere with tliat of conquest. But the Latins 
were a promiscuous multitude, and what their independent 
valor had earned was not to be transferred to a single master. 
Though the name of emperor seemed necessary for the gov- 
ernment of Constantinople, the unity of despotic ])ower was 
very foreign to the principles and interests of the crusaders. 
In their selfish schemes of aggrandizement they tore in pieces 
the Greek empire. One-fourth only was allotted to the em- 
peror, three-eighths were the share of the llepublic of Venice, 
and the remainder was divided among the chiefs. Baldwin, 
count of Flanders, obtained the imperial title, with the feudal 
sovereignty over the minor principalities. A monarchy thus 
dismembered had little prospect of honor or durability. The 
Latin emperors of Constantinople were more contemptible and 
unfortunate, not so much from personal character as i)olitical 
weakness, than their predecessors ; their vassals rebelled 
against sovereigns not more powerful than themselves ; the 
Bulgarians, a nation who, after being long formidable, had 
been subdued by the imperial arms, and only recovered inde- 
pendence on the eve of the Latin con(|uest, insulted their capi- 
tal ; the Greeks viewed them with silent hatred, and hailed 
the dawning deliverance from the Asiatic coast. On that side 
of the Bosporus the Latin usurpation was scarcely for a 
moment acknoAvledged ; Nice became the seat of a Greek 
dynasty, who reigned with honor as far as the Mseander ; and, 
crossing into Europe, after having established their dominion 
throughout Eoumania and other provinces, ex})elled the last 
Latin emjjerors from Constantinople in less than sixty years 
from its capture (a.d. 12()1). 

§ 7. During the reign of these Greeks at Nice they had 
fortunately little to dread on the side of their former enemies, 



302 INVASION OF ASIA. Chap. VI. 

and were generally on terms of friendship with the Seljukians 
of Iconium. That monarcliy, indeed, had sufficient objects of 
appreliension for itself. Their own example in changing the 
upland plaiils of Tartary for the cultivated valleys of the 
south was imitated in the thirteentli century by two succes- 
sive hordes of Northern barbarians. The Karismians, whose 
tents had been pitched on the lower Oxus and Caspian Sea, 
availed themselves of the decline of the Turkish power to 
establish their dominion in Persia, and menaced, though they 
did not overthrow, the kingdom of Iconium. A more tremen- 
dous storm ensued in the irruption of Moguls under the sons 
of Zingi.3 Khan. From the farthest regions of Chinese Tar- 
tary issued a race more fierce and destitute of civilization 
than those who had preceded, whose numbers were told by 
hundreds of thousands, and whose only test of victor}^ was 
devastation. All Asia, from the Sea of China to the Euxine, 
wasted beneath the locusts of the North. They annihilated 
the phantom of authority which still lingered with the name 
of caliph at Bagdad. They reduced into dependence, and 
finally subverted, the Seljukian dynasties of Persia, Syria, 
and Iconium. The Turks of the latter kingdom betook them- 
selves to the mountainous country, where they formed several 
petty princii)alities, which subsisted by incursions into the 
territory of the INIoguls or the Greeks. The chief of one of 
these, named Othman, at the end of the thirteenth century, 
penetrated into the province of Bithynia, from which his pos- 
terity was never withdrawn. 

The em})ire of Constantinople had never recovered the blow 
it received at the hands of the Latins. Most of the islands in 
the Archipelago, and the provinces of proper Greece, from 
Tliessaly southward, were still possessed by those invaders. 
The wealth and naval power of the empire had passed into the 
hands of the maritime republics ; Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and 
Barcelona were enriched by a commerce which they carried on 
as independent states within the precincts of Constantino] )le, 
scarcely deigning to solicit the permission or recognize the 
supremacy of its master. In a great battle fought under the 
walls of the city, between the Venetian and Genoese fleets, the 
weight of the Roman Empire, in Gibbon's expression, was 
scarcely felt in the balance of these opulent and powerful 
republics (a.d. 1352). Eight galleys Avere the contribution of 
the Emperor Cantacuzene to his Venetian allies ; and upon 
their defeat he submiLted to the ignominy of excluding them 
forever from trading in his dominions. Meantime the remains 



Greeks, Etc. THE TARTARS OR MOGULS. 303 

of tlie empire in Asia were seized by the independent Turkish 
dynasties, of which the most ilhistrious, that of the Ottomans, 
occupied the province of Bithynia (a.d. 1431). Invited by a 
Byzantine faction into Europe about the middle of the four- 
teentli century, they fixed themselves in the neighborhood of 
the capital, and in the thirty years' reign of Amurath I. sub- 
dued, with little resistance, the province of Roumania and the 
small Christian kingdoms that had been formed on the lower 
Danube. Bajazet, the successor of Amurath, reduced the 
independent emirs of Anatolia to subjection, and, after long 
threatening Constantinople, invested it by sea and land (a.d. 
I.'5y6). The Greeks called loudly upon their brethren of the 
West for aid against the common enemy of Christendom ; but 
the flower of French chivalry had been slain or taken in the 
battle of Nicopolis, in Bulgaria, where the King of Hungary, 
notwithstanding the heroism of these volunteers, was entirely 
defeated by Bajazet. The Emperor Manuel left his capital 
with a faint hope of exciting the courts of Europe to some 
decided efforts by personal representations of the danger ; and, 
during his absence, Constantinople was saved, not by a friend 
indeed, but by a power more formidable to her enemies than to 
herself. 

The loose masses of mankind, that, without laws, agricul- 
ture, or fixed dwellings, overspread the vast central regions of 
Asia, have, at various times, been impelled by necessity of 
subsistence, or through the casu-al appearance of a command- 
ing genius, upon the domain of culture and civilization. Two 
principal roads connect the nations of Tartary with those of 
the west and south ; the one into Europe, along the Sea of 
Azoff and northern coast of the Euxine ; the other across the 
interval between the Bukharian Mountains and the Caspian 
into Persia. Four times at least within the period of authentic 
history the Scythian tribes have taken the former course, and 
poured themselves into Europe, but each wave was less effect- 
ual than the preceding. The first of these was in tlie fourth 
and fifth centuries, for we may range those rapidly successive 
migrations of the Goths and Huns together, when the Roman 
Empire fell to the ground, and the only boundary of barbarian 
conquest was the Atlantic Ocean upon the shores of Portugal. 
The second wave came on with the Hungarians in the tenth 
century, whose ravages extended as far as the southern prov- 
inces of France. A third attack was sustained from the 
Moguls, under the children of Zingis, at the same ]ieriod as 
that which overwlielmed Persia. The Russian monarchy was 



304 DANGER OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Chap. XL 

destroyed in this invasion, and for two hundred years that 
great country hiy prostrate under the yoke of the Tartars. As 
they advanced, Pohind and Hungary gave little opposition, 
and the farthest nations of Europe were appalled by the tem- 
pest. But Germany was no longer as she had been in the 
anarchy of the tenth century ; tlie Moguls were unused to 
resistance, and still less inclined to regular warfare ; they retired 
before the Emperor Frederick II., and the utmost points of 
their western invasion were the cities of Lignitz, in Silesia, and 
Neustadt, in Austria (a.d. 1245). In the fourth and last 
aggression of the Tartars their progress in Europe is hardly 
perceptible ; the Moguls of Timur's army could only boast the 
destruction of Azoff and the pillage of some Russian prov- 
inces. Timur, the sovereign of these Moguls and founder of 
their second dynasty, which has been more permanent and cel- 
el)rated than that of Zingis, had been the prince of a small 
tribe in Transoxiana, between the Gihon and Sirr, the doubt- 
ful frontier of settled and pastoral nations. His own energy 
and the weakness of his neighbors are sufficient to explain the 
revolution he effected. Like former conquerors, Togrol Kek 
and Zingis, he chose the road through Persia ; and, meeting 
little resistance from the disordered governments of Asia, 
extended his empire on one side to the Syrian coast, while by 
successes still more renowned, though not belonging to this 
place, it reached, on the other, to the heart of Hindttstan. In 
his old age the restlessness of ambition impelled him against 
the Turks of Anatolia. Bajazet hastened from the siege of 
Constantinople to a more perilous contest ; his defeat and cap- 
tivity in the plains of Angora clouded for a time the Ottoman 
crescent, and preserved the wreck of the Greek Eni|)ire for 
fifty years longer (a.d. 1402). 

§ 8. The Moguls did not improve their victory ; in the 
western parts of Asia, as in Ilindostan, Timur was but a bar- 
barian destroyer, though at Samarcand a sovereign and a legis- 
lator. He gave up Anatolia to the sons of Bajazet ; but the 
unity of their power was broken ; and the Ottoman kingdom, 
like those which had preceded, experienced the evils of par- 
tition and mutual animosity. Eor about twenty years an 
opportunity Avas given to the (Jreeks of recovering part of their 
losses ; but they were incapable of making the best use of this 
advantage, and when Amurath II. reunited under his vigorous 
sceptre the Ottoman monarchy, Constantinople was exposed to 
another siege and to fresh losses (a.d. 1421). Her walls, how- 
ever, repelled the enemy ; and during the reign of Amurath 



Greeks, Etc. ALARM IN EUROPE. ' 305 

she had leisure to repeat those signals of distress which the 
princes of Christendom refused to observe. Every province 
was in turn subdued — every city opened her gates to the con- 
queror : the limbs were lojjped off one by one ; but the pulse 
still beat at the heart, and the majesty of the Roman uame 
was idtimately confined to the walls of Constantinople. Be- 
fore Mohammed II. i)lanted his cannon against them, he had 
completed every smaller conquest and deprived the expiring 
empire of every hope of succor or delay. It was necessary that 
Constantinople should fall ; but the magnanimous resignation of 
her emperor bestows an honor upon her fall which her pros- 
perity seldom earned. The long deferred but inevitable 
moment arrived, and the last of the Caesars (I will not say of 
the Palaeologi) folded round him the imperial mantle, and re- 
membered the name which he represented in the dignity of 
heroic death (a.d. 14r),'>). It is thus that the intellectual 
principle, when enfeebled by disease or age, is found to rally 
its energies in the presence of death, and pour the radiance of 
unclouded reason around the last striiggles of dissolution. 

§ 9. Though the fate of Constantinople had been protracted 
beyond all reasonable expectation, the actual intelligence oper- 
ated like that of sudden calamity. A sentiment of consterna- 
tion, perhaps of self-reproach, thrilled to the heart of 
Christendom. There seemed no longer any thing to divert the 
Ottoman armies from Hungary ; and if Hungary should be 
subdued, it was evident that both Italy and the German Em- 
pire were exposed to invasion. A general union of Christian 
powers was required to withstand this common enemy. But 
the popes, who had so often armed them against each other, 
wasted their spiritual and political counsels in attempting to 
restore unanimity. War was proclaimed against the Tiirks at 
the Diet of Frankfort, in 1454 ; but no efforts were made to 
carry the menace into execution. Xo prince could have sat on 
the imperial throne more unfitted for the emergency than 
Frederick III. ; his mean spirit and narrow capacity exposed 
him to the contempt of mankind — his avarice and duplicity 
insured the hatred of Austria and Hungary. During the pa- 
pacy of Pius II., whose heart was thoroughly engaged in this 
legitimate crusade, a more specious attempt was made by con- 
vening a European congress at Mantua. Almost all the sov- 
ereigns attended by their envoys : it was concluded that 
50,000 men-at-ai-ms should be raised, and a tax levied for three 
years of one-tenth from the revenues of the clergy, one-thirtieth 
from those of the laity, and one-twentieth from the capital of 



306 • OTTOMAN CONQUESTS SUSPENDED. Chap. VI. 

the Jews (a.d. 1459). Pius engaged to head this armament in 
person ; but when he appeared next year at Ancona, the ap- 
pointed place of embarkation, the princes had failed in all their 
promises of men and money, and he found only a headlong 
crowd of adventurers, destitute of every necessary, and expect- 
ing to be fed and paid at the pope's expense. It was not by 
such a body that Mohammed could be expelled from Constanti- 
nople. If the Christian sovereigns had given a steady and sin- 
cere co-operation, the contest would still have been arduous 
and uncertain. In the early crusades the superiority of arms, 
of skill, and even of discipline, had been uniformly on the 
side of Europe. But the present circumstances were far from 
similar. An institution, begun by the first and perfected by 
the second Amurath, had given to the Turkish armies what 
their enemies still wanted, military subordination and veteran 
experience. Aware, as it seems, of the real superiority of 
Europeans in war, these sultans selected the stoutest youths 
from their Bulgarian, Servian, or Albanian captives, who were 
educated in habits of martial discipline, and formed into a reg- 
ular force with the name of Janizaries. After conquest had 
put an end to personal captivity, a tax of every fifth male child 
was raised upon the Christian population for the same i)urpose. 
The arm of Europe was thus turned upon herself; and the 
Western nations must have contended with troops of hered- 
itary robustness and intrepidity Avhose emulous enthusiasm for 
the country that had adopted them was controlled by habitual 
obedience to their commanders. 

Yet forty years after the fall of Constantinople, at the 
epoch of Cliarles VIII. 's expedition into Italy, the just ap- 
prehensions of European statesmen might have gradually 
subsided. Except the Morea, Negropont, and a few other 
unimportant conquests, no real progress had been made by 
the Ottomans. Mohammed II. had been kept at bay by the 
Hungarians ; he had been repulsed with some ignominy by 
tlio knights of St John from the island of Ehodes. A petty 
cliieftain defied this mighty conqueror for twenty years in 
the mountains of Epirus ; and the persevering courage of his 
desultory warfare with such trifling resources, and so little 
pros])ect of ultimate success, may justify the exaggerated ad- 
miration with which his contemporaries honored the name of 
Scanderbeg. Once only the crescent was displayed on the 
Calabrian coast; but the city of Otranto remained but a year 
in the jwssession of Mohammed (a.d. 14<S0). On his death, a 
disputed succession involved his children in civil war. Bajazet, 



Greeks, Etc. OTTOMAN CONQUESTS SUSPENDED. 307 

the eldest, obtained the victory ; but his rival brother, Ziziin, 
fled to Rhodes, from whence he was removed to France, and 
afterwards to Kome. Apprehensions of this exiled prince 
seem to have dictated a pacihc policy to the reigning sultan, 
whose character did not possess the usual energy of Ottoman 
sovereio^ns. 



308 



LIbT OF POPES 



Chap. VII. Part I. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



HISTORY OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWER DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 

PART I. 



§ 1. Wealth of the Clergy. Its Sources. § 2. Spoliation of Church Property. §3. 
Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction. Arbitrative. Coercive. §4. Political Power of the 
Church. §5. Supremacy of the Crown. § 6. Charlemagne. §7. Change after his 
Death, and Encroachments of the Church in the Ninth Century. § 8. Primacy of 
the See of Rome. Its early Stage. §9. Gregory!. § 10. Council of Frankfort. 
§ 11. FaKse Decretals. § 12. Progress of Papal Authority. § 13. Excommunica- 
tion. § 14. Interdicts. § 15. State of the Church in the Tenth (Century. § 16. 
Marriage of Priests. §17. Simony. Episcopal Elections. §18. Imperial Author- 
ity over the Popes. §11). Disputes concerning Investitures. Gregory VII. and 
Henry IV. Concordat of Calixtus. § 20. Election by Chapters. § 21. General 
System of Gregory VII. § 22. Progress of Papal Usurpations in the Twelfth Cen- 
tury. §23. Innocent III. His Character and Schemes. 

LIST OF POPES DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 



Tear of 

Acoeasion. 




A.D. 




795 


Leo IIL 


816 


Stephen IV. 


817 


Paschal I. 


824 


Eugenius II. 


827 


Valentinus. 


827 


Gregory IV. 


844 


Sergius II. 


842 


Leo IV. 


856 


Benedict III. 


858 


Nichohis I. 


8G7 


Hadrian II. 


872 


John VIII. 


882 


Martin II. 


884 


Hadrian III. 


885 


Stephen V. 


891 


Formosus. 


896 


Boniface VI. 


896 


Stephen VI. 


897 


Roniamis. 


898 


Theodore II. 


898 


John IX. 


900 


Benedict IV. 


903 


Leo V. 


903 


Christopher. 


904 


Sergius III. 



912(?)Anastasius III. 



Tear of 

Accession. 






A.n. 






913 


Lando. 




914 


John X. 




928 


Leo VI. 




929 


Steplien VII. 




931 


John XI. 




930 


Leo VII. 




939 


Stephen VIIL 




942(?)Martin III. 




94(3 


Agapetus II. 




955 


John XII. 




903 


Leo VIIL 




904 


Benedict V. (Anti 


pope ?) 


905 


John XIII. 




972 


Benedict VI. 




974 


Boniface VII. ('?). 




974 


Domnus II. (?). 




974 


Benedict VII. 




983 


.lohn XIV. 




984 


Jolm XV. 




99(5 


Gregory V. 




990 


Jolm XVI. 




1000 


Sylvester II. 




1003 


John XVII. 




1003 


John XVIII. 




1009 


Sergius IV. 




1012 


Benedict VIII. 





EccLES. Power. 



DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 



309 



Tear of 
AcoessioQ 






Voar of 

Accefsioii 




A.D. 






A.D. 




1024 


John XIX. 




1261 


Urban IV. 


1033 


Benedict IX. 




1266 


Clement IV, 


1044 


Sylvester (Ant 


-pope). 


1269 


Vacancy. 


1045(?)Gregory VI. 




1271 


Gregory X. 


1046 


Clement II. 




1276 


Innocent V. 


1048 


Damascus II. 




1276 


Hadrian V. 


1048 


Leo IX. 




1277 


John XX. or XXL 


1054 


Victor II. 




1277 


Nicholas III. 


1057 


Stephen IX. 




1281 


Martin IV. 


1058 


Benedict X. 




1285 


Honorius IV. 


1059 


Nicholas II. 




1289 


Nicholas IV. 


1061 


Alexander II. 




1294 


Celestine V. 


1073 


Gregory VII. (Ilildebrand). 


1294 


Boniface VIII. 


1080 


(Clement, Anti-pope). 






1086 


Victor III. 






Popes at Avignon. 


1087 
1099 


Urljan II. 
Paschal II. 




1303 
1305 


Benedict XL 
Clement V. 


1118 
1119 


Gelasius II. 
Calixtus II. 




1316 
1334 


John XXI. or XXIL 
Benedict XII. 




(Gregory, Anti 


-pope). 


1342 


Clement VI. 


1121 


(Celestine, Ant 


i-pope). 


1352 


Innocent VI. 


1124 
1130 

1143 


Ilonoriiis II. 
Innocent 11. 
(Anacletns, Anti-pope). 
Celestine II. 


1362 
1370 


Urban V. 
Betiun to Rome. 
Gregory XL 


1144 
1145 


Lucius II. 
Eugenius III. 






The great Schism. 


1153 


Anastasius IV. 




1378 


Urban VI., Clement VII 


1154 


Hadrian IV. 




1389 


Boniface IX. 


1160 


Alexander III. 




1394 


Benedict (Anti-pope). 


1160 


(Victor, Anti-pope). 


1404 


Innocent VII. 


1164 


(Paschal III., Anti-pope). 


1400 


Gregory XII. 


1168 


(Calixtus, Anti 


-pope). 


1409 


Alexander V. 


1180 


Lucius III. 




1410 


John XXIL or XXIII. 


1185 


Urban III. 




1417 


Martin V. 


1187 


Gregory VIII. 




1431 


Eugene IV. 


1187 


Clement III. 




1455 


Calixtus IV. 


1191 


Celestine III. 




1458 


Pius II. 


1198 


Innocent III. 




1404 


Paul II. 


1216 


Honorius III. 




1471 


Sixtus IV. 


1227 


Gregory IX. 




1484 


Innocent VIII. 


1241 


Celestine IV. 




1493 


Alexander VI. 


1241 


Vacancy. 




1503 


Pius IIL 


1243 


Innocent IV. 




1503 


Julius II. 


1255 


Alexander IV. 




1513 


Leo X. 



§ 1. At the irniptiou of the northern invaders into the 
Roman Empire they found the clergy already endowed with 
extensive possessions. Besides the spontaneous oblations 
upon which the ministers of the Christian Church had ori- 



310 WEALTH OF THE CHURCH. Chap. YII. Part I. 

giiially subsisted, they had obtained, even under the pagan 
emperors, by concealment or connivance — for the Roman law 
did not permit a tenure of lands in mortmain — certain im- 
movable estates, the revenues of which were applicable to 
their own maintenance, and that of the poor. These, indeed, 
were precarious, and liable to confiscation in times of perse- 
cution. But it was among the first effects of the conversion 
of Constantine to give not only a security, but a legal sanc- 
tion, to the territorial acquisitions of the Church. The Edict 
of Milan, in 313, recognizes the actual estates of ecclesiasti- 
cal corporations. Another, published in 321, grants to all the 
subjects of the empire the power of bequeathing their prop- 
erty to the Church. His own liberality and that of his succes- 
sors set an example which did not want imitators. Passing 
rapidly from a condition of distress and persecution to the 
summit of prosperity, the Church degenerated as rapidly from 
her ancient purity, and forfeited the respect of future ages in 
the same proportion as she acquired the blind veneration of 
her own. Covetousness, especially, became almost a character- 
istic vice. 

The devotion of the conquering nations, as it was still less 
enlightened than that of the subjects of the empire, so Avas 
it still more munificent. The ecclesiastical hierarchy never 
received any territorial endowment by law, either under the 
Roman Empire or the kingdoms erected upon its ruins. But 
the voluntary munificence of princes, as well as their sub- 
jects, amply supplied the place of a more universal provision. 
Large private estates, or, as they were termed, patrimonies, 
not only within their own dioceses, but sometimes in distant 
countries, sustained the dignity of the principal sees, and es- 
])eciany tlmt of Rome. But it must be remarked that many 
of these donations are of lands uncultivated and unappro- 
|)riated. The monasteries acquired legitimate riches by the 
culture of tlieso deserted tracts and by the prudent manage- 
ment of their revenues, which were less exposed to the or- 
dinary means of dissipation than those of tlie lait}^ If the 
possessions of ecclesiastical communities had all been as fair- 
ly earned, we could find nothing in them to reprehend. But 
other sources of wealth were less pure, and they derived 
their wealth from many sources. Those who entered into 
a monastery threw frequently their whole estates into the 
common stock ; and even the children of rich parents were 
expected to make a donation of land on assuming the cowl. 
Some gave their property to the Church before entering on 



EccLES. Tower. ITS INCREASE. 311 

military expeditions ; gifts were made by some to take effect 
after tlieir lives, and bequests by many in the terrors of dis- 
solution. Even tliose legacies to charitable purposes, which 
the clergy could with more decency and speciousness rec- 
ommend, and of whicli the administration was generally con- 
fined to them, were frequently applied to their own benelit. 
They failed not, above all, to inculcate upon the wealthy sin- 
ner that no atonement could be so acceptable to Heaven as 
liberal presents to its earthly delegates. To die without al- 
lotting a portion of worldly wealth to pious uses was accounted 
almost like suicide, or a refusal of the last sacraments ; and 
hence intestacy passed for a sort of fraud upon the Church, 
which she punished by taking the administration of the de- 
ceased's effects into her own hands. This, however, was pecu- 
liar to England, and seems to have been the case there only 
from the reign of Henry III. to tliat of Edward III., when the 
bishop took a piortion of the intestate's personal estate for the 
advantage of the Church and poor, instead of distributing it 
among his next of kin. The canonical penances imposed upon 
repentant offenders, extravagantly severe in themselves, were 
commuted for money or for immovable possessions — a fer- 
tile though scandalous source of monastic wealth, which the 
popes afterwards diverted into their own coffers by the usage 
of dispensations and indulgences. The Church lands enjoyed 
an immunity from taxes, though not in general from military 
service, wdien of a feudal tenure. •■■ But their tenure was fre- 
quently in what was called frankalnloigne, without any obliga- 
tion of service. Hence it became a customary fraud of lay 
proprietors to grant estates to the Church, which they received 
again by way of fief or lease, exempted from public burdens. 

As an additional source of revenue, and in imitation of 
the Jewish law, the payment of tithes was recommended or 
enjoined. These, however, Avere not applicable at hrst to 
ihe maintenance of a resident clergy. Parochial divisions, as' 
they now exist, did not take place, at least in some countries, 
till several centuries after the establishment of Christianity. 
The rural churches, erected successively as the necessities of a 
congregation required or the piety of a landlord suggested, 
were in fact a sort cf chapels dependent on the cathedral, and 
served by itinerant ministers at the bishop's discretion. The 
bishop himself received the tithes, and apportioned them as he 
thought fit. A capitulary of Charlemagne, however, regulates 

I Palgriive luis shown that the Aiifjlo-Saxon clergy were not exempt, orijrinally 
at least, from the trivoda necessitas imposed on all allodial proprietors. Tin y were 
better treated on the Continent; and I'.oniface exclaims tliat in no part of the world 
was such servitude imposed on tlie Church as among the English. 



312 TITHES. Chap. VII. Part I. 

tlieir division into three parts : one for the bishop and his 
clergy, a second for the poor, and a third for the support of 
the fabric of the Chureli. Some of the rural churches obtained 
by episcopal concessions the privileges of baptism and burial, 
which were accompanied with a fixed share of tithes, and 
seemed to imply the residence of a minister. The same priv- 
ileges were gradually extended to the rest ; and thus a complete 
parochial division was linally established. But this was hardly 
the case in England till nearly the time of the Conquest.^ 
About the year 1200, the obligation of paying tithes, which 
had been originally confined to those called predial, or the 
fruits of the earth, was extended, at least in theory, to every 
species of profit, and to the wages of every kind of labor. 

§ 2. Yet there were many hindrances that thwarted the 
clergy in their accpiisition of opulence, and a sort of reflux 
that set sometimes very strongly against them. In times of 
barbarous violence nothing can thoroughly compensate for the 
inferiority of physical strength and prowess. The ecclesias- 
tical history of tlie Middle Ages presents one long contention 
of fraud against robbery ; of acquisitions made by the Church 
through such means as I have described, and torn from her by 
lawless power. Notwithstanding the frequent instances of 
extreme reverence for religious institutions among the nobility, 
we should be deceived in supposing this to be their general 
character. Rapacity, not less insatiable than that of the ab- 
bots, was commonly united with a daring fierceness that the 
abbots could not resist.^ In every country we find continual 

2 The grant of Ethehvolf in 855 has iippeMrcd to some antiquaries the most proba- 
ble oiijiin of tlie general rijrht to tithes ill Kiif,'hin(i. 'i'liis grant is recorded in two 
charters; the first transcribed in Ingulfus's " History of Croyland," and dated at 
Winchester on the Nones of November, 855; the second extant in two chartularies, 
and bearing dale at Wilton, April 22, 854. But the hitter is marked by Blr. Kemble 
as spurious ((Jodex Ang.-Sax. Diploni., ii., 52); and the work of Ingulfus is also re- 
garded as spurious. The fact, liowever, that Ethehvolf made some great and gen- 
eral donation to the (Uiurch rests on the authority of Asser, whom later writers have 
principally copied. His words are, " Eodem (juoque anno (855) Adelwolfus venera- 
bilis, rex bccidentalium Saxonuni, deciniam totius regni sui partem ab omni regali 
servitio et tribiito liberavit, et in sempiterno gralio in cruce Christi, pro redemptione 
aniniie sua> et antecessoruin suorum, Uni et Trino Deo immoUivit." (Gale, XV., 
Script, iii., 156.) It is really difticult to infer anything from such a passage; but 
whatever the writer may have meant, or whatever truth there may be in his story, it 
seems impossible to strain his words into a grant of tithes. 

3 The Church was often compelled to grant leases of her lands, under the name of 
precari(B, to laymen who probably rendered little or no service in return, though a 
rent or ce7isus was expressed in the instrument. These /irecflrio; seem to have been 
for life, but were frequently renewed. They are not to be confounded with' terrcB 
censuales, or lands let to a tenant at rack-rent, which of course formed a considera- 
ble branch of revenue. The grant was called prerarbi from being obtained at the 
prayer of the grantee : and the uncertainty of its renewal seems to have given rise to 
the adjective precarious. In the ninth century, though the pretensions of the bish- 
ops were never higher, the Church itself was more pillaged under pretext of these 
vrecarice, and in other ways, than at any former time. 



EccLES. PowEU. ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHOEITY. 313 

lamentation over the plunder of ecclesiastical possessions. 
The parochial tithes, especially, as the hand of robbery falls 
heaviest upon the weak, were exposed to unlawful seizure. 
In the tenth and eleventh centuries nothing was more common 
than to see the revenues of benefices in the hands of lay im- 
^n-opriators, who employed curates at the cheapest rate, an 
abuse that has never ceased in the Church. Both the bishops 
and convents were obliged to invest powerful lay protectors, 
under the name of advocates, with considerable fiefs, as the 
price of their assistance against depredators. But these advo- 
cates became too often themselves the spoilers, and oppressed 
the helpless ecclesiastics for whose defence they had been en- 
gaged. If it had not been for these drawbacks, the clergy 
must, one would imagine, have almost acquired the exclusive 
])roperty of the soil. They did enjoy, according to some 
authorities, nearly one half of England, and, I believe, a greater 
proportion in some countries of Europe. They had reached, 
})erhaps, their zenith in respect of territorial property about 
the conclusion of the twelfth century.^ After that time the 
disposition to enrich the clergy by pious donations grew more 
languid, and was put under certain legal restraints, to which I 
shall hereafter advert ; but they became rather more secure 
from forcible usurpations. 

§ 3. The acquisitions of wealth by the Church were hardly 
so remarkable, and scarcely contributed so much to her great- 
ness, as those innovations upon the ordinary course of justice 
which fall under the head of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and 
immunity. Episcopal jurisdiction, properly so called, may be 
considered as depending upon the choice of litigant parties, 
ui)on tlnnr condition, and upon the subject-matter of their 
differences. 

1. ArhltrativG Aiiilioriti/. — The arljitrative authority of eccle- 
siastical i^astors, if not coeval with Christianity, grew up very 
early in the Cluirch, and was natural, or even necessary, to an 
insulated and persecuted society.^ Accustomed to feel a strong 
aversion to the imperial tribunals, and even to consider a 
recurrence to them as hardly consistent with their profession, 
the early Christians retained somewhat of a similar prejudice, 
even after the establishment of their religion. The arbitra- 
tion of their bishops still seemed a less objectionable mode of 
settling differences. And this arbitrative jurisdiction was 
powerfully supported by a law of Constantine, which directed 

* Tlie great age of monasteries in England was the reigns of Henry I., Stephen, 
and Henry II. 5 See 1 Corinth, vi.,4. 



314 ECCLESIASTICAL AUTHOIUTY. Chap. VII. Tart L 

the civil magistrate to enforce the execution of episcopal 
awards. But the Church had no jurisdiction in questions of a 
temporal nature, except by means of the joint reference of con- 
tending parties. 

2. Coercive Authoriti/. — If it Avas considered almost as a 
general obligation upon the primitive Christians to decide 
their civil disputes by internal arbitration, much more would 
this be incumbent upon the clergy. The canons of several 
councils, in the fourth and lifth centuries, sentence a bishop or 
priest to deposition who should bring any suit, civil or even 
criuunal, before a secular magistrate. This must, it should 
appear, be confined to causes where the defendant was a clerk ; 
since tlie ecclesiastical court had hitherto no coercive jurisdic- 
tion over the laity. But the early Merovingian kings adopted 
the exclusive jurisdiction of the bishop over causes wherein 
clerks were interested, without any of the checks which Jus- 
tinian had provided. Many laws enacted during their reigns, 
and under Charlemagne, strictly prohibit the temi)oral magis- 
trates from entertaining complaints against the children of the 
Church. 

This jurisdiction over the civil causes of clerks was not 
immediately attended with an equally exclusive cognizance of 
criminal offences imputed to them, wherein the state is so 
deeply interested, and the Church could inflict so inadequate a 
})unishnient. Justinian a})pears to have reserved such offences 
for trial before the imperial magistrate, though with a material 
provision that the sentence against a clerk should not be exe- 
cuted without the consent of the bishop or the final decision 
of the emperor. The bishop is not expressly invested with this 
controlling power by the laws of the IMerovingians ; but they 
enact that lie must be present at the trial of one of his clerks ; 
which probably was intended to declare the necessity of his 
concurrence in the judgment. The episcopal order was, indeed, 
absolutely exempted from secular jurisdiction by Justinian ; a 
])rivilege which it had vainly endeavored to establish under 
the eaidier emperors. France permitted the same immunity ; 
Chili)eric, one of tlie most arbitrary of her kings, did not ven- 
ture to charge some of his bishops with treason, except before 
a council of their brethren. Finally, Charlemagne seems to 
have extended to the whole body of the clergy an absolute 
exemption from the judicial authority of the magistrate. 

3. The character of a cause, as well as of the parties engaged, 
might bring it within the limits of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 
In all questions simply religious the Church had an original 



EccLKS. Power. rOLITICAL POWER OF CLERGY. 315 

right of decision ; in those of a temporal nature the civil 
magistrate had, by the imperial constitution, as exclusive an 
authority. Later ages witnessed strange innovations in this 
respect, when the spiritual courts usurped, under sophistical 
pretences, almost the wliole administration of justice. But 
these encroachments were not, 1 ap)})rehend, very striking till 
the twelfth century ; and as about the same time measures, 
more or less vigorous and successful, began to be adopted in 
order to restrain them, I shall defer this j)art of tlie subject 
for the present. 

§ 4. In this sketch of the riches and jurisdiction of the 
hierarchy, I may seem to have imj)lied their political iuHu- 
ence, which is naturally connected with the two former. They 
possessed, however, more direct means of acquiring temporal 
power. Even under the lloman emperors they had found 
their roads into palaces ; but they assumed a far more decided 
influence over the new kingdoms of the West. They were en- 
titled, in the first place, by the nature of those free govern- 
ments, to a privilege unknown under the imperial despotism, 
that of assisting in the deliberative assemblies of the nation. 
Councils of bishops, such as has been convoked by Constantine 
and his successors, were limited in their functions to decisions 
of faith or canons of ecclesiastical discipline. But the North- 
ern nations did not so well preserve the distinction between 
secular and spiritual legislation. The laity seldom, perliaps, 
gave their suffrage to the canons of the Church ; but the 
Church was not so scrupulous as to trespassing upon the prov- 
ince of the laity. Many provisions are found in the canons of 
national and even provincial councils which relate to the tem- 
poral constitution of the state. Thus one held at Calcluith 
(an unknown place in England), in 787, enacted that none but 
legitimate princes sliould be raised to the throne, and not svich 
as were engendered in adultery or incest. But it is to be 
observed that, although this synod was strictly ecclesiastical, 
being summoned by the pope's legate, yet the kings of IMercia 
and Northumberland, with many of their nobles, confirmed tlie 
canons by their signature. 

The bishops acquired and retained a great part of their as- 
cendency by a very respectable instrument of power — intel- 
lectual superiority. As they alone were acquainted with the 
art of writing, they were naturally intrusted with political 
correspondence, and Avith the ft^aming of the laws. As they 
alone knew the elements of a few sciences, the education of 
royal families devolved iipon them as a necessary duty. lu 



316 SUPREMACY OF THE STATE. Chap. VII. Part I. 

the fall of Rome, their influence upon the barbarians wore 
down the asperities of conquest, and saved the provincials half 
the shock of that tremendous revolution. As captive Greece 
is said to have subdued her Roman conqueror, so Rome, in her 
own turn of servitude, cast the fetters of a moral captivity 
upon the fierce invaders of the North. Chiefly through the 
exertions of the bishops, w^hose ambition may be forgiven for 
its ett'ects, her religion, her language, in part even her laws, 
were transplanted into the courts of Paris and Toledo, which 
became a degree less barbarous by imitation. 

§ 5. jSTotwithstanding, however, the great authority and 
privileges of the Church, it was decidedly subject to the su- 
premacy of the crown, both during the continuance of the 
Western Empire and after its subversion. The emperors con- 
voked, regulated, and dissolved universal councils ; the kings of 
France and Spain exercised the same right over the synods 
of their national churches. The Ostrogoth kings of Italy fixed 
by their edicts the limits within which matrimony was pro- 
hibited on account of consanguinity, and granted dispensations 
from them. Though the Roman emperors left episcopal elec- 
tions to the clergy and people of the diocese, in which they 
were followed by the Ostrogoths and Lombards, yet they often 
interfered so far as to confirm a decision or to determine a 
contest. The kings of France went farther, and seem to have 
invariably either nominated the bishops, or, what was nearly 
tantamount, recommended their own candidate to the electors. 

§ 6. But the sovereign who maintained with the greatest 
vigor his ecclesiastical supremacy was Charlemagne. Most of 
the capitularies of his reign relate to the discipline of the 
Church; principally, indeed, taken from the ancient canons, 
but not the less receiving an additional sanction from his au- 
thority. Some of his regulations, which appear to have been 
original, are such as men of High-Church principles would, 
even in modern times, deem infringements of spiritual inde- 
pendence ; that no legend of doubtful authority should be 
read in the churches, but only the canonical books, and tliat no 
saint should be honored whom tlie whole Church did not ac- 
knowledge. These were not passed in a synod of bishops, but 
enjoined by the sole authorit}' of the emperor, who seems to 
have arrogated a legislative power over the Church which he 
did not possess in temporal affairs. Mam' of his other laws 
relating to the ecclesiastical constitution are enacted in a gen- 
eral council of the lay nobility as well as of prelates, and are 
so blended with those of a secular nature, that the two orders 



EccLES. PowEii. PRETENSIONS OF THE HIERARCHY. 317 

may appear to have equally consented to the whole. His 
father Pepin, indeed, left a remarkable precedent in a council 
held in 744, where the Nicene faith is declared to be estab- 
lished, and even a particular heresy condemned, with the 
consent of the bishops and nobles. But whatever share we 
may imagine the laity in general to have had in such matters, 
Charlemagne himself did not consider even theological decis- 
ions as beyond his province ; and, in more than one instance, 
manifested a determination not to surrender his own judgment, 
even in questions of that nature, to any ecclesiastical authority. 
§ 7. It is highly probable, indeed, that an ambitious hie- 
rarchy did not endure without reluctance this imperial su- 
premacy of Charlemagne, though it was not expedient for 
them to resist a prince so formidable, and from whom they 
had so much to expect. l>ut their dissatisfaction at a scheme 
of government incompatible with their own objects of perfect 
independence produced a violent recoil under Louis the Debo- 
nair, who attempted to act the censor of ecclesiastical abuses 
with as much earnestness as his father, though with very 
inferior qualifications for so delicate an undertaking. The 
bishops, accordingly, were among the chief instigators of tliose 
numerous revolts of his children which harassed this emperor. 
They set, upon one occasion, the first example of an usurpation 
which was to become very dangerous to society — the deposi- 
tion of sovereigns by ecclesiastical authority. Louis, a prisoner 
in the hands of his enemies, had been intimidated enough to 
undergo a public penance ; and the bishops pretended that, 
according to a canon of the Church, he was incapable of return- 
ing afterwards to a secular life or preserving the character of 
sovereignty. Circumstances enabled him to retain the emjiire 
in defiance of this sentence ; but the Church had tasted the 
pleasure of trampling upon crowned heads, and was eager to 
repeat tlie experiment. Under the disjointed and feeble ad- 
ministration of his posterity in their several kingdoms, the 
bishops availed themselves of more than one opportunity to 
exalt their temjioral power. Those weak Carlovingian princes, 
in their mutual animosities, encouraged the pretensions of a 
common enemy. Thus Charles the Bald and Louis of Bavaria, 
having driven their brother Lothaire from his dominions, held 
an assembly of some bisliops, vrho adjudged him unworthy 
to reign, and, after exacting a promise from the two allied 
brothers to govern better than he had done, permitted and 
commanded them to divide his territories. After concurring 
in this unprecedented encroachment, Charles the Bald had 



318 ENCROACHMENTS OF THE CHURCH. Ch. VII. Tt. I. 

little right to complain when, some years afterwards, an assem- 
bly of bisliops declared himself to have forfeited his crown, 
released liis subjects from their allegiance, and transferred his 
kingdom to Louis of Bavaria. But, in truth, he did not pre- 
tend to deny the principle which he had contributed to main- 
tain. Even in his own behalf he did not appeal to the rights 
of sovereigns, and of the nations whom they represent. " No 
one," says this degenerate grandson of Charlemagne, " ought 
to have degraded me from the throne to which I was con- 
secrated, until at least I had been heard and judged by the 
bishops, through whose ministry I was consecrated, who are 
called the thrones of God, in which God sitteth, and by whom 
he dispenses his judgments ; to whose paternal chastisement I 
was willing to submit, and do still submit myself." 

These passages are very remarkable, and afford a decisive 
proof that the power obtained by national churches, through 
the superstitious prejudices then received, and a train of favor- 
able circumstances, was as dangerous to civil government as 
the subsequent usurpations of the Roman j^ontiff, against 
which Protestant writers are apt too exclusively to direct their 
animadversions. Voltaire, I think, has remarked that the 
ninth century was the age of the bishops, as the eleventh and 
twelfth were of the popes. It seemed as if Europe was about 
to pass under as absolute a domination of the hierarchy as had 
been exercised by the priesthood of ancient Egypt or the 
Druids of Gaul. Thus the Bishop of Winchester, presiding as 
papal legate at an assembly of the clergy in 1141, during the 
civil war of Stephen and Matilda, asserted the right of electing 
a king of England to appertain principally to that order ; and 
by virtue of this unprecedented claim, raised Matilda to the 
throne. England, indeed, has been obseqiuous, beyond most 
other countries, to the arrogance of her hierarchy, especially 
during the Anglo-Saxon period, when the nation was sunk in 
ignorance and effeminate superstition. Every one knows the 
stor}' of King Edwy in some form or other, though I believe it 
impossible to ascertain the real circumstances of that contro- 
verted anecdote. But, upon the supposition least favorable to 
the king, the behavior of Archbishop Odo and Dunstan Avas an 
intolerable outrage of spiritual tyranny.^ 

§ 8. But, while the prelates of these nations, each Avithin 

'• Catholic writers, for the most part, contend that Elgiva was the mistress and not 
the wife of Edwy; but it is impossible with the extant evidence to arrive at any cer- 
tain conchision upon tlie subject. Wliat is manifest alone is, tliat a young Iting was 
persecuted and dethroned by the insoleuce of monkery exciting a superstitious peo- 
ple against him. 



EccLES. Power. RISE OF THE PAPAL POWER. 319 

his respective sphere, were prosecuting their system of en- 
croachment upon the laity, a new scheme was secretly form- 
ing within the bosom of the Church, to inthral both that and 
the temporal governments of the world under an ecclesiastical 
monarch. Long before the earliest epoch that can be fixed 
for modern history, and, indeed, to speak fairly, almost as far 
back as ecclesiastical testimonies can carry us, the bishops of 
Rome had been venerated as first in rank among the rulers of 
the Church. The nature of this primacy is doubtless a very 
controverted subject. It is, however, reduced by some moder- 
ate Catholics to little more than a precedency attached to the 
See of Rome in consequence of its foundation by the chief of 
the apostles, as well as the dignity of tlie imperial city. A 
sort of general superintendence was admitted as an atti'ibute 
of this primacy, so that the bishops of Rome Avere entitled, 
and indeed bound, to remonstrate, when any error or irregu- 
larity came to their knowledge, especially in the Western 
churches, a greater part of which had been planted by them, 
and were connected, as it were by filiation, Avitli the common 
capital of the Roman Empire and of Christendom. Various 
causes had a tendency to prevent the bishops of Rome from 
augmenting their authority in the East, and even to diminish 
that which they had occasionally exercised ; the institution of 
patriarchs at Antioch, Alexandria, and afterwards at Constan- 
tinople, with extensive rights of jurisdiction ; the difference 
of rituals and discipline ; but, above all, the many disgusts 
taken by the Greeks, which ultimately produced an irreparable 
schism between the two churches in the ninth century. But 
within the pale of the Latin Church every succeeding age en- 
hanced the power and dignity of the Roman See. By the 
constitution of the Churcli, such at least as it became in the 
fourth century, its divisions being arranged in conformity to 
those of the Empire, every province ought to have its metro- 
politan, and every vicariate its ecclesiastical exarch or primate. 
The Bishop of Rome presided, in the latter ca])acity, over the 
Roman vicariate, comprehending Southern Italy, and the 
three chief Mediterranean islands. But as it happened, none 
of the ten provinces forming this division had any metropol- 
itan ; so that the popes exercised all metropolitical functions 
within them, such as the consecration of bishops, the convoca- 
tion of synods, the ultimate decision of appeals, and many 
other sorts of authority. These provinces are sometimes called 
the Roman patriarchate, the bishops of Rome having always 
been reckoned one, generally indeed the first, of the patriarclis ; 



320 GREGORY I. Chap. VII. Part I. 

each of whom was at the head of all the metropolitans within 
its limits, but without exercising those privileges whicli by 
the ecclesiastical constitution appertained to the latter. Though 
the Roman patriarchate, properly so called, was comparatively 
very small in extent, it gave its cliief, for the reason mentioned, 
advantages in point of authority which the others did not 
possess. 

I may perhaps appear to have noticed circumstances inter- 
esting only to ecclesiastical scholars. But it is important to 
apprehend this distinction of the patriarchate from the pri- 
macy of Rome, becau.se it was by extending the boundaries of 
the former, and by applying the maxims of her administration 
in the south of Italy to all the Western churches, that she 
accomplished the first object of her scheme of usurpation, in 
subverting the provincial system of government under the 
metropolitans. Their first encroachment of this kind was in 
the province of Illyricum, which they annexed in a manner to 
their own patriarchate, by not permitting any bishops to be 
consecrated Avithout their consent.' This was before the end 
of the fourth century. Their subsequent advances were, how- 
ever, very gradual. About the middle of the sixth century we 
find them confirming the elections of archbishops of Milan. 
They came by degrees to exercise, though not always success- 
fully, and seldom without opposition, an appellant jurisdiction 
over the causes of bishops deposed or censured in provincial 
synods. But, upon the whole, the papal authority had made 
no decisive progress in France, or perhaps anywhere beyond 
Italy, till the pontificate of Gregory I. (a.d. 50(")-604). 

§ 9, This celel)rated person was not distinguished by learn- 
ing, which he affected to depreciate, nor by his literary per- 
formances, which the best critics consider as below mediocrity, 
Imt by qualities more necessary for his purpose, intrepid 
ambition and unceasing activity. He maintained a perpetual 
correspondence with the empei'ors and their ministers, with 
the sovereigns of the Western kingdoms, with all the hierarchy 
of the Catholic Church — employing, as occasion dictated, the 
language of devotion, arrogance, or adulation. Claims hitherto 
disputed, or half preferred, assumed under his hands a more 
definite form ; and nations too ignorant to compare pre- 
cedents or discriminate principles -yielded to assertions con- 
fidently made by the authority which they most respected. 
Gregory dwelt more than his predecessors upon the power of 

7 The ecclesiastical province of Illyricum included Macedonia. Siricius, the 
author of this encroachment, seems to have been one of the first usurpers. 



EccLES. Power. COUNCIL OF FRANKFORT. 321 

the keys, exckisively, or at least principally, committed to St. 
Peter, which had been supposed in earlier times, as it is now 
by the Galilean Catholics, to be inherent in the general body 
of bishops, joint sharers of one indivisible episcopacy. And 
thus the patriarchal rights, being manifestly of mere ecclesias- 
tical institutions, were artfully confounded, or, as it were, 
merged, in the more paramount supremacy of a papal chair. 
From the time of Gregory the po])es appear in a great measure 
to have thrown aAvay that scaffolding, and relied in preference 
on the pious veneration of the people, and on the opportunities 
which might occur for enforcing their dominions with the pre- 
tence of divine authority. 

§ 10. It cannot, I think, be said that any material acquisi- 
tions of ecclesiastical power were obtained by the successors of 
Gregory for nearly 150 years. As none of them possessed 
vigor and reputation equal to his own, it might even appear 
that the papal influence was retrograde. But in effect the 
principles whicli supported it were taking deeper root, and 
acquiring strength by occasional, though not very frequent, 
exercise. Appeals to the pope were sometimes made by prel- 
ates dissatished with a local sentence. National councils were 
still provoked by i)rinces, and canons enacted under their 
authority by the bishops who attended. The Church of France, 
and even that of England, planted as the latter had been by 
Gregory, continu.ed to preserve a tolerable measure of indepen- 
dence. The first striking infringement of this was made 
through the influence of an Englishman, Winf rid, better known 
as St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany. Having undertaken 
the conversion of Thuringia, and other still heathen countries, 
he a})plied to the pope for a commission, and was consecrated 
bishoi) without any determinate see. Upon this occasion he 
took an oath of obedience, and became ever afterwards a zeal- 
ous upholder of the apostolical chair. His success in the con- 
version of Germany Avas great, his reputation eminent, which 
enabled him to effect a material revolution in ecclesiastical 
government. At a synod of the French and German bishops, 
held at Frankfort in 742 by Boniface as legate of Pope Zacliarv, 
it was enacted that, as a token of their willing subjection to 
the See of Eome, all metropolitans should request the palliuui 
at the hands of the pope, and obey his lawful comniiinds. 
This was construed by the popes to mean a jaromise of dlicdi- 
ence before receiving the pall, which was changed in after 
times by Gregory VII. into an oath of fealty. 

§ 11. This Council of Frankfort claims a leading place as an 



322 FALSE DECRETALS. Chap. VII. Part L 

epoch in the history of the papacy. I shall but just glance at 
the subsequent political revolutions of that period ; the inva- 
sion of Italy by Pepin, his donation of the exarchate to the 
Holy See, the conquest of Lombardy by Charlemagne, the 
patriarchate of liome conferred upon both these princes, and 
the revival of the Western Empire in the person of the latter. 
These events had a natural tendency to exalt the papal suprem- 
acy, which it is needless to indicate. But a circumstance of 
a very different nature contributed to this in a still greater 
degree. About the conclusion of the eighth century there 
appeared, under the name of one Isidore, an unknown person, 
a collection of ecclesiastical canons, now commonly denomi- 
nated the False Decretals. These purported to be rescripts or 
decrees of. the early bishops of Rome ; and their effect was to 
diminish the authority of metropolitans over their suffragans, 
by establishing an appellant jurisdiction of the Roman See in 
all causes, and by forbidding national councils to be holden 
without its consent. Every bishop, according to the decretals 
of Isidore, was amenable only to the immediate tribunal of the 
pope ; by which one of the most ancient rights of the provin- 
cial synod was abrogated. Every accused person might not 
only appeal from an inferior sentence, but remove an unfin- 
ished process before the supreme pontiff. New sees were not 
to be erected, nor bishops translated from one see to another, 
nor their resignations accepted, Avithout the sanction of the 
pope. They were still, indeed, to be consecrated by the metro- 
politan, but in the pope's name. It has been plausibly sus- 
pected that these decretals were forged by some bishop in jeal- 
ousy or resentment ; and their general reception may at least 
be partly ascribed to STich sentiments. The archbishops were 
exceedingly ])Owerful, and might often abuse their superiority 
over inferior prelates ; but the whole episcopal aristocracy had 
abundant reason to lament tlieir acquiescence in a system of 
which the metropolitans were but the earliest victims. Upon 
these spurious decretals was built the great fabric of papal 
su])remacy over the different national churches — a fabric 
which has stood after its foundation crumbled beneath it ; for 
no one has pretended to deny, for the last two centuries, that 
the imposture is too palpable for any but the most ignorant 
ages to credit. 

§ 12. The Galilean Church made for some time a spirited 
though unavailing struggle against this rising despotism. In 
the reign of .Charles the Bald a bold defender of ecclesiastical 
independence was found in Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, 



EccLES. Power. PAPAL ENCROACHMENTS. 323 

the most distinguished statesman of his age. Equal in ambi- 
tion, and almost in public estimation, to any pontiff, he some- 
times came off successfully in his contentions with Rome. But 
time is fatal to the unanimity of coalitions ; the French bishops 
were accessible to superstitious prejudice, to corrupt influence, 
to mutual jealousy. Above all, they were conscious that a per- 
suasion of the pope's omnipotence had taken hold of the lait3\ 
Though they complained loudly, and invoked, like patriots of 
a dying state, names and principles of a freedom that was no 
more, they submitted almost in every instance to the continual 
usur[)ations of the Holy See. Cue of those which most annoyed 
their aristocracy was the concession to monasteries of exemp- 
tion from episcopal authority. These had been very uncom- 
mon till about the eighth century, after which they were studi- 
ously multiplied. It was naturally a favorite object with the 
abbots ; and sovereigns, in those ages of blind veneration for 
monastic establishments, were pleased to see their own founda- 
tions rendered, as it would seem, more respectable by privi- 
leges of independence. The popes had a closer interest in 
granting exemptions, which attached to them the regular 
clergy, and lowered the dignity of the bishops. In the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries whole orders of monks were declared 
exempt at a single stroke ; and the abuse began to awaken 
loud complaints, though it did not fail to be aggravated 
afterwards. 

§ 13. The principles of ecclesiastical supremacy were read- 
ily applied by the popes to support still more insolent usurpa- 
tions. Chiefs by divine commission of the whole Church, 
every earthly sovereign must be subject to their interference. 
The first instance where the Roman pontiffs actually tried 
the force of their arms against a sovereign Avas the excom- 
munication of Lothaire, king of Lorraine, and grandson of 
Louis the Debonair. This prince had repudiated his wife, 
upon unjust pretexts, but with the approbation of a national 
council, and had subsequently married his concubine. Nich- 
olas L, the actual pope, despatched two legates to investigate 
this business, and decide according to the canons. They hold 
a council at Metz, and confirm the divorce and marriage. En- 
raged at this conduct of his ambassadors, the pope summons 
a council at Rome, annuls the sentence, deposes the arch- 
bishops of Treves and Cologne, and directs the king to discard 
his mistress. After some sliuffling on the part of Lothaire 
he is excommunicated ; and in a short time we find both the 
king and his prelates, who had begun with expressions of pas- 



324 EXCOMMUNICATIONS. Chap. VII. Paet I. 

sionate contempt towards the pope, suing humbly for absolu- 
tion at the feet of Adrian II., successor of Nicholas, which 
was not granted without ditficulty. 

Excommunication, whatever o})inions may be entertained 
as to its religious efficacy, was originally nothing more in 
appearance than the exercise of a right wdiich every society 
claims, the expulsion of refractory members from its body. 
No direct temporal disadvantages attended this penalty for 
several ages ; but as it was the most severe of spiritual cen- 
sures, and tended to exclude the object of it not only from a 
participation in religious rites, but in a considerable degree 
from the intercourse of Christian society, it was used spar- 
ingly and upon the gravest occasions. Gradually, as the 
Church became more powerful a.nd more im|)erious, excom- 
munications were issued upon every provocation, rather as a 
weapon of ecclesiastical warfare than with any regard to its 
original intention. Princes who felt the inadequacy of their 
own laws to secure obedience called in the assistance of more 
formidable sanctions. Several capitularies of Charlemagne 
denounce the penalty of excommunication against incendiaries 
or deserters from the army. Charles tlie Bald procured simi- 
lar censures against his revolted vassals. Thus the boundary 
between temporal and spiritual offences grew every day less 
distinct ; and the clergy were encouraged to fresh encroach- 
ments as they discovered the secret of rendering them suc- 
cessful. 

The civil magistrate ought, undoubtedly, to protect the just 
rights and lawful jurisdiction of the Church. It is not so 
evident that he should attach temporal penalties to her cen- 
sures. Excommunication has never carried such a presump- 
tion of moral turpitude as to disable a man, upon any solid 
principles, from the usual privileges of society. Su])erstition 
and tyranny, however, decided otherwise. The sujjport due 
to Church censures by temporal judges is vaguely declared in 
the ca|)itularies of Pepin and Charlemagne. It became in 
later ages a more established ])rinciple in France and Eng- 
land, and, I presume, in other countries. Py our common 
law, an excommunicated person is incapable of being a witness 
or of bringing an action, and he may be detained in prison 
until he obtains absolution. By the Estal)lishments of St. 
Louis, his estate or person might be attached by the magis- 
trate. These actual penalties were attended by marks of 
abhorrence and ignominy still more calculated to make an 
impression on ordinary minds. They were to be shunned like 



EccT,ES. Power. INTERDICTS. 325 

men infected with leprosy, by their servants, their friends, 
and their families. Two attendants only, if we may trust a 
current history, remained with Robert, king of France, who, 
on account of an irregular marriage, Avas put to this ban by 
Gregory V., and these threw all the meats which had passed 
his table into the fire. Indeed, the mere intercourse with a 
proscribed person incurred what is called the lesser excom- 
munication, or privation of the sacraments, and required 
penitence and absolution. In some places a bier was set 
before the door of an excommunicated individual, and stones 
thrown at his windows ; a singular method of compelling his 
su-bmission ! Everywhere the excommunicated were debarred 
of a regular sepulture, which, though obviously a matter of 
police, has, through the superstition of consecrating burial- 
grounds, been treated as belonging to ecclesiastical control. 

§ 14. But' as excommunication, which attacked only one, 
and perhaps a hardened sinner, was not always efficacious, 
the Church had recourse to a more comprehensive punishment. 
For the offence of a nobleman she put a county, for that of a 
prince his entire kingdom, under an Interdict or suspension of 
religious offices. No stretch of her tyranny was, perhaps, so 
outrageous as this. During an interdict the churches were 
closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied, no rite but those of 
baptism and extreme unction performed. The penalty fell 
upon those who had neither partaken nor could have prevented 
the offence ; and the offence was often but a private dispute, 
in which the pride of a pope or bishop had been wounded. 
Interdicts were so rare before the time of Gregory VII., that 
some have referred them to him as their author; instances 
may, however, be found of an earlier date, and especially that 
which accompanied the above-mentioned excommunication of 
Robert, king of France. They were afterwards issued not un- 
frequently against kingdoms ; but in particular districts they 
continually occurred. 

This was the mainspring of the machinery that the clergy 
set in motion, the lever by which they moved the world. 
From the moment that these interdicts and excommunications 
had been tried the powers of the earth might be said to have 
existed only by sufferance. iSTor was the validity of such de- 
nunciations supposed to depend upon their justice. The im- 
poser, indeed, of an unjust excommunication was guilty of a 
sin ; but the party subjected to it had no remedy but submis- 
sion. The received theory of religion concerning the indis- 
pensable obligation and mysterious efficacy of the rites of 



326 CORRUPTION OF MORALS. Chap. VII. Part I. 

coniuiunion and confession mnst have induced scrupnkms minds 
to make any temporal sacrifice rather than incur their priva- 
tion. One is rather surprised at the instances of failure than 
of success in the employment of these spiritual weapons against 
sovereigns or the laity in general. It was, perhaps, a fortu- 
nate circumstance for Europe that they were not introduced 
upon a large scale during the darkest ages of superstition. In 
tlie eightli or ninth centuries they would probably have met 
with a more implicit obedience. 

§ 15. So high did the popes carry their pretensions, that 
John VIII. (a.d. 872-882) asserted very plainly a right of 
choosing the emperor, and seems indirectly to liave exercised 
it in the election of Charles the Bald, who had not primogen- 
iture in his favor. This prince, whose restless ambition was 
united with meanness as well as insincerity, consented to sign 
a capitulation, on his coronation at Rome, in favor of the 
pope and Church, a precedent which was improved upon in 
subsequent ages. Rome was now prepared to rivet her fet- 
ters upon sovereigns, and at no period have the condition 
of society and the circumstances of civil government been so 
favorable for her ambition. But the consummation was still 
suspended, and even her progress arrested, for more than 150 
years. This dreary interval is hlled up, in the annals of the 
papacy, by a series of revolutions and crimes. Six popes 
were deposed, two murdered, and one mutilated. Frequently 
two or even three competitors, among whom it is not always 
possible by any genuine criticism to distinguish the true 
shepherd, drove each other alternately from the city. A 
few respectable names appear thinly scattered through this 
darkness ; and sometimes, perhaps, a pope who had acquired 
estimation by his private virtues may be distinguished by 
some encroachment on the right of princes or the privileges 
of national cliurches. But in general the pontiffs of that age 
had neither leisure nor capacity to perfect the great system 
of temporal supremacy, and looked rather to a vile profit from 
the sale of episcopal confirmations, or of exem})tions to mon- 
asteries. 

The corruption of the head extended naturally to all other 
members of the Churcli. All writers concur in stigmatizing 
tlie dissoluteness and neglect of decency that prevailed among 
the clergy. The bishojis, indeed, who were to enforce them 
had most occasion to dread their severity. They were ob- 
truded upon their sees, as the supreme pontiffs were upon that 
of Rome, by force or corruption. A child of live years old 



EccLES. PoAVEii. CELIBACY. 327 

was made Archbishop of Rheims. The See of Narbonne was 
purchased for another at the age of ten. By this relaxation of 
morals the priesthood began to lose its hold upon the preju- 
dices of mankind. These are nourished chietly, indeed, by 
shining exam^des of piety and virtue, but also, in a superstitious 
age, by ascetic observances, by the fasting and watching of 
monks and hermits. The regular clergy accordingly, or mo- 
nastic orders, retained at all times a far greater portion of 
respect than ordinary priests, though degenerated themselves, 
as was admitted, from their primitive strictness. 

§ 16. Two crimes, or at least violations of ecclesiastical law, 
had become almost universal in the eleventh century, and ex- 
cited general indignation — the marriage or concubinage of 
priests, and the sale of benetices. Celibacy had been, from 
very early times, enjoined as an obligation upon the clergy. 
It was perhaps permitted that those already married for the 
first time and to a virgin, might receive ordination ; and this, 
after prevailing for a length of time in the Greek Churcli, was 
sanctioned by the Council of Trullo, in 691.^ and has ever 
since continued one of the distinguishing features of its disci- 
pline. Tlie Latin Church, however, did not receive these 
canons, and has uniformly persevered in excluding the three 
orders of priests, deacons, and subdeacons, not only from con- 
tracting matrimony, but from cohabiting with wives espoused 
before their ordination. The prohibition, however, during 
some ages existed only in the letter of her canons. In every 
country the secular or parochial clergy kept women in their 
houses, upon more or less acknowledged terms of intercourse, 
by a connivance of their ecclesiastical superiors, which almost 
amounted to a positive toleration. The sons of priests Avere 
capable of inheriting by the law of France and also of Castile. 
Some vigorous efforts had been made in England by Dunstan, 
with the assistance of King Edgar, to dispossess the married 
canons, if not the parochial clergy, of their benefices ; but the 
abuse, if such it is to be considered, made incessant progress 
till the middle of the eleventh century. There was certainly 
much reason for the rulers of the Church to restore this part of 
their discipline, since it is by cutting off her members from the 
charities of domestic life that she secures their entire affection 
to her cause, and renders them, like veteran soldiers, independ- 
ent of every feeling but that of fidelity to their commander and 

8 Tliis council was held at Constantinople in the dome of the palace, called Trul- 
lus by the Latins. Tlie nominative Trullo, though solecistical, is used by ecclesiasti- 
cal writers in English. Bishops are not "jthin this permission, and cannot retain 
their wives by the discipline of the Greek CUurch. 



328 SIMONY. Chap. YII. Part I, 

regard to the interests of their body. Leo IX. accordingly, 
one of the first pontiffs avIio retrieved the honor of the apos- 
tolic chair, after its long period of ignominy, began in good 
earnest the difficult work of enforcing celibacy among the 
clergy. His successors never lost sight of this essential point 
of discipline. It was a struggle against the natural rights and 
strongest affections of mankind, which lasted for several ages, 
and succeeded only by the toleration of greater evils than those 
it was intended to remove. The laity, in general, took part 
against the married priests, who were reduced to infamy and 
want, or obliged to renounce their dearest connections. In 
many parts of Germany no ministers were left to p)erform di- 
vine services. But perhaps there was no country where the 
rulers of celibacy met with so little attention as in England. 
It was acknowledged in the reign of Henry I. that the greater 
and better part ot the clergy were married, and that prince is 
said to have permitted them to retain their wives. ^ But the 
hierarchy never relaxed in their efforts ; and all the councils, 
general or provincial, of the twelfth century, utter denuncia- 
tions against concuhinarij })riests. After that age we do not 
iind them so frequently mentioned ; and the abuse by degrees, 
though not suppressed, was reduced within limits at which the 
Church might connive. 

§ 17. Simony, or the corrupt purchase of spiritual benefices, 
was the second characteristic reproach of the clergy in the 
eleventh century. The measures taken to repress it deserve 
particular consideration, as they produced effects of the high- 
est importance in the history of the Middle Ages. According 
to the primitive custom of the Church, an episcopal vacancy 
was filled up by election of the clergy and people belonging to 
the city or diocese. The subject of their choice was, after the 
establishment of the federate or ])rovincial system, to be ap- 
proved, or rejected by the metropolitan and his suffrages ; and, 
if approved, he was consecrated by them. It is probable that, 
in almost every case, the clergy took a leading part in the 
selection of their bishops ; but the consent of the laity was ab- 
solutely necessary to render it valid. They were, however, 
by degrees excluded from any real participation, first in the 
Greek, and finally in the Western Church. But this was not 
effected till pretty late times ; the people fully preserved their 
elective rights at Milan in the eleventh century, and traces of 

9 Giraldus Cambrensis, about the end of Henry II. 's reipn {apud Wright's " Po- 
litical Son.s;>< of England," p. 353), mentions the marriage of the parochial clergy as 
almost universal. They were called /ocr7;-/>, as living at the same hearth, on pre- 
teuce of service; but the fellowship, we perceive, was not confined to the fireside. 



EccLES, PoWEK. EPISCOPAL ELECTIONS. 329 

their concurrence may be found both in France and Germany 
in the next age. 

It does not appear that the early Christian emperors inter- 
posed with tlie freedom of choice any further than to make 
their own confirmation necessary in the great patriarchal sees, 
such as Ivome and Constantinople, which were frequently the 
objects of violent competition, and to decide in controverted 
elections. The Gothic and Lombard kings of Italy followed 
the same line of conduct. But in the French monarchy a more 
extensive authority was assumed by the sovereign. Though 
the practice was subject to some variation, it may be said gen- 
erally that the Merovingian kings, the line of Charlemagne, 
and the German emperors of the house of Saxony, conferred 
bishoprics either by direct nomination, or, as was more regular, 
by recommendatory letters to the electors. In England, also, 
before the conquest, bishops were appointed. in the witenage- 
mot ; and even in the reign of William it is said that Lanfranc 
was raised to the See of Canterbury by consent of I'arlianient. 
But, independently of this p>rerogative, which length of time 
and the tacit sanction of the people have rendered unquestion- 
ably legitimate, the sovereign had other means of controlling 
the election of a bishop. Those estates and honors which com- 
pose the temporalities of the see, and without which the naked 
spiritual privileges would not have tempted an avaricious gen- 
eration, hatl chiefly been granted by former kings, and were 
assimilated to lands held on a beneficiary tenure. As they 
seemed to partake of the nature of fiefs, they required similar 
formalities — investiture by the lord, and an oath of fealty by 
the tenant. Cliarlemagne is said to have introduced this prac- 
tice ; and, by way of visible symbol, as usual in feudal institu- 
tions, to have put tlie ring and crosier into the hands of the 
newly consecrated bishop. And this continued for more than 
two centuries afterwards without exciting any scandal or re- 
sistance. 

The Church has undoubtedly surrendered part of her in- 
dependence in return for ample endowments and temporal 
power ; nor could any claim be more reasonable than that of 
feudal superiors to grant the investiture of dependent fiefs. 
But the fairest right may be sullied by abuse ; and the sover- 
eigns, the lay-patrons, the prelates of the tenth and eleventh 
centuries, made their powers of nomination and investiture 
subservient to the grossest rapacity. According to the ancient 
canons, a benefice was avoided by any simoniacal payment or 
stipulation. If these were to be enforced, the Church must 



330 CONFIRMATION OF POPES. Chap. VII. Pakt I. 

almost be cleared of its ministers. Either tlirougii bribery in 
places where elections still prevailed, or through corrupt agree- 
ments with princes, or at least customary presents to their 
wives and ministers, a large proportion of the bishops had no 
valid tenure in their sees. The case was perhaps worse with 
inferior clerks ; in the Churcli of Milan, which was notorious 
for tliis corruption, not a single ecclesiastic could stand the 
test, the archbishop exacting a price for tlie collation of every 
benetice. 

§ 18. The bishops of Rome, like those of inferior sees, were 
regularly elected by the citizens, laymen as well as ecclesias- 
tics. But their consecration was deferred until the popular 
choice had received the sovereign's sanction. The Romans 
regularly despatched letters to Constantinople or to the exarch 
of Ravenna, praying that their election of a pope might be con- 
firmed. Exceptions, if any, are infrequent while Rome was 
sul)ject to the Eastern Empire. This, among other imperial 
prerogatives, Charlemagne might consider as his own. He 
possessed the city, especially after his coronation as emperor, 
in full sovereignty ; and even before that event had investi- 
gated, as su])reme chief, some accusations preferred against tlie 
Pope Leo III. iSTo vacancy of the pa})acy took place after 
Charlemagne became emperor; and it must be confessed, tliat 
in the first which happened under Louis the Debonair, Stephen 
IV. was consecrated in haste, without that prince's approbation. 
But Gregory IV., his successor, waited till his election had 
been confirmed, and, upon the whole, the Carlovingian em- 
perors, though less uniformly than their predecessors, retained 
that mark of sovereignty. But during the disorderly state of 
Italy which followed the last reigns of Charlemagne's posterity, 
while the sovereignty and even the name of an emj)eror were 
in abeyance, the supreme dignity of Christendom was conferred 
only by the factious rabble of its capital. Otho the great, in 
receiving the imperial crown, took upon him the prerogatives 
of Charlemagne. There is even extant a decree of Leo VIII., 
which grants to him and his successors the right of naming 
future popes. But the authenticity of this instrument is 
denied by the Italians. It does not appear that the Saxon em- 
perors went to siich a length as nomination, except in one in- 
stance (that of Gregory V., in 996) ; but tliQy sometimes, not 
uniformly, confirmed the election of a pope, according to 
ancient custom. An explicit right of nomination was, however, 
conceded to the Em])eror Henry III., in 1047, as the on!y 
means of rescuing the Roman Church from the disgrace and 



EccLES. Power. ECEEE OF NICHOLAS II. 331 

depravity into which it liad fallen. Henry appointed two or 
three very good popes ; acting in this against the warnings of 
a selfish policy, as fatal experience soon proved to his family. 

This high prerogative was }ierliaps not designed to extend 
beyond Henry himself. Pint, even if it haa been transmissil)le 
to his successors, the infancy of his son, Henry IV., and the 
factions of that minority, i)recluded the possibility of its 
exercise. Nicholas II., in 1051), i)ublished a decree which re- 
stored the right of election to the Komans, but with a remark- 
able variation from the original form. The cardinal bishops 
(seven in number, holding sees in the neighborhood of Rome, 
and consequently suffragans of the pojje as patriarch or metro- 
politan) were to choose the supreme pontiff', with the concur- 
rence first of the cardinal priests and deacons (or ministers of 
the parish churches of Rome), and afterwards of the laity. 
Thus elected, the new pope was to be presented for confirma- 
tion to Henry, " now king, and hereafter to become emperor," 
and to such of his successors as should personally obtain that 
privilege. This decree is the foundation of that celebrated 
mode of election in a conclave of cardinals which has ever 
since determined the headship of the Church. It was intended 
not only to exclude the citizens, who had, indeed, justly for- 
feited their primitive right, but as far as possible to jn-epare 
the way for an absolute emancipation of the papacy from the 
imperial control ; reserving only a precarious and person-al 
concession to the emperors instead of their ancient legal 
prerogative of confirmation. 

The real author of this decree, and of all other vigorous 
measures adopted by the popes of that age, whether for the 
assertion of tlieir independence or the restoration of discipline, 
was Hildebrand, archdeacon of the Church of Rome, by far 
the most conspicuous person of the eleventh century. Acquir- 
ing by his extraordinary qualities an unbounded ascendency 
over the Italian clergy, they regarded him as their chosen 
leader and the hope of their common cause. He had been 
empowered singly to nominate a pope on the part of the 
Romans after the death of Leo IX., and compelled Henry III. 
to acquiesce in his choice of Victor TI. No man could i)roceed 
more fearlessly towards his object than Hildebrand, nor with 
less attention to conscientious impediments. Though the 
decree of Nicholas II., his OAvn work, had expressly reserved 
the right of confirmation of the young king of Germany, yet 
on the death of that pope Hildebrand procured the election 
and consecration of Alexand(^r IT., without waiting for any 



oo2 DIFFEKENCES OF GREGOKY VII. Chap. VII. Part I. 

authority. During this pontihcate he was considered as some- 
thing greater than the pope, who acted entirely by Ids coun- 
sels. On Alexander's decease, Hildebrand, long since the real 
head of the Church, was raised with enthusiasm to its chief 
dignity, and assumed the name of Gregory VII. (a.d. 1073). 

§ It). Notwithstanding the late precedent at the election of 
Alexander II., it appears that Gregory did not yet consider 
Ids plans sufficiently mature to throw off the yoke altogether, 
but declined to receive consecration until he had obtained the 
consent of the King of Germany. This moderation was not 
of long continuance. The situation of Germany speedily 
afforded him an opportunity of displaying his ambitious 
views. Henry IV., through a very bad education, was arbi- 
trary and. dissolute; the Saxons were engaged in a desperate 
rebellion ; and secret disaffection had spread among the princes 
to an extent of which the pope was much better aware than 
the king. He began by excommunicating some of Henry's 
ministers on pretence of simony, and made it a ground of 
rejuonstrance that they were not instantly dismissed. His 
next step was to publish a decree, or rather to renew one, of 
Alexander II., against lay investitures. The abolition of these 
was a favorite object of Gregory, and formed an essential part 
of his general scheme for emanci])ating the spiritual and sub- 
jugating the temporal power. The ring and crosier, it was 
asserted by the papal advocates, were the emblems of that 
power which no monarch could bestow. Though the estates 
of bishops might, strictly, be of temporal right, yet, as they 
had been inseparably annexed to their spiritual office, it be- 
came just that what was first in dignity and importance should 
carry with it those accessory parts. 

The contest about investitures, though begun by Gregory 
VII., did not occu})y a very prominent ^tlace during his. pon- 
tificate, its interest being suspended by other more extraor- 
dinary and im})ortant dissensions between the Church and 
Empire. The i)ope, after tampering some time with the dis- 
affected party in Germany, summoned Henry to appear at 
Rome and vindicate himself from the charges alleged by his 
subjects. Such an outrage naturally exasperated a young and 
passionate monarch. Assembling a number of bishops and 
other vassals at Worms, lie procured a sentence that Gregory 
should no longer be obeyed as lawful pope. But the time was 
past for those arbitrary encroachments, or at least high pre- 
rogatives, of former emperors. The relations of dependency 
between Church and State were now about to be reversed. 



EccLES. PowEK. WITH HENRY IV. 333 

Gregory had no sooner received accounts of the proceedings at 
AVornis than he summoned a council in the Lateran pahxce, and 
by a solemn sentence not only excommunicated Henry, but de- 
prived him of the kingdoms of Germany and Italy, releasing 
his subjects from their allegiance, and forbidding them to obey 
him as sovereign. Thus Gregory VII. obtained the glory of 
leaving all his i^redecessors behind, and astonishing mankind 
by an act of audacity and ambition which the most emulous of 
his successors could hardly surpass." 

The first impulses of Henry's mind on hearing this denun- 
ciation were indignation and resentment. But, like otlier 
inexperienced and misguided sovereigns, he had formed an 
erroneous calculation of his own resources. A conspiracy, 
long prepared, of which the dukes of Suabia and Carinthia 
were the chiefs, began to manifest itself. kSonie were alien- 
ated by his vices, and others jealous of his family. The 
rebellious Saxons took courage ; the bishops, intimidated by 
excommunication, withdrew from his side, and he suddenly 
found himself almost insulated in the midst of his dominions. 
In this desertion he had recourse, through panic, to a miser- 
able expedient. He crossed the Alps with the avowed deter- 
mination of submitting, and seeking absolution from the pope. 
Gregory was at Canossa, a fortress near Eeggio, belonging to 
his faithful adherent, the Countess Matilda. It was in a 
winter of unusual severity. The emperor was admitted, with- 
out his guards, into an outer court of the castle, and three 
successive days remained from morning till evening in a 
woollen shirt and Avith naked feet, while Gregory, shut up 
with the countess, refused to admit him to his presence. On 
the fourth day he obtained absolution ; but only on condition 
of appearing on a certain day to learn the pope's decision 
whether or no he should be restored to his kingdom, until 
which time he promised not to assume the ensigns of royalty 
(A.D. 1077). 

This base humiliation, instead of conciliating Henry's ad- 
versaries, forfeited the attachment of his friends. In his 
contest with the pope he had found a zealous support in the 

10 The sentence of Gregory VII. against the Emperor Henry was directi'd, we 
should always remember, to persons already well disposed to reject his authority. 
Men are glad to be told that it is their duty to resist a sovereign agiiinst whom they 
are in rebellion, and will not be very scrupulous in examining conclusions which fall 
in with their inclinations and interests. Allegiance was in those turbulent ages 
easily thrown ott', and the right of resistance was in continual exercise. To the 
Gernians of the eleventh century a prince unfit for Christian couiniunion would 
easily appear unfit to reign over them; and though Henry had not given much real 
provocation to the pope, his vices and tyranny might seem to challenge any spiritual 
censure of temporal chastisement. 



334 DISPUTE ABOUT INVESTITUIIES. Cuap. VII. Part L 

principal Lombard cities, among Avhom the married and si- 
moniacal elei-gy had great influence. Indignant at his sub- 
mission to Gregory, whom they affected to consider as an 
usurper of the papal chair, they now closed their gates against 
the emperor, and spoke openly of deposing him. In this 
singular position between opposite dangers, Henry retrod his 
late ste})s, and broke off his treaty with the pope ; preferring, 
if he must fall, to fall as the defender rather than the betrayer 
of his imperial rights. The rebellious princes of Germany 
chose another king, liodolph, duke of Suabia, on whom Greg- 
ory, after some delay, bestowed the crown, with a Latin verse 
importing that it was given by virtue of the original commis- 
sion of St. Peter. But the success of this pontiff' in his 
immediate designs was not answerable to his intrepidity. 
Henry both subdued the German rebellion, and carried on the 
war with so much vigor, or rather with so little resistance, in 
Italy, that he was crowned in Rome by the antipope Guibert, 
whom he had raised in a council of his partisans to the 
government of the Church instead of Gregory. The latter 
fonnd an asylum under the protection of Ivoger Guiscard at 
Salerno, where he died an exile. His mantle, however, de- 
scended upon his successors. But Henry V. being stronger 
in the support of his German vassals than his father had been, 
none of the popes with whom he was engaged, had the bold- 
ness to repeat the measures of Gregory VII. At length, each 
party grown weary of this ruinous contention, a treaty was 
agreed upon between the emperor and Calixtus II., which put 
an end by compromise to the question of ecclesiastical inves- 
titures (a.d. 1122). By this compact the emperor resigned 
foi'cver all pretence to invest bisho])S by the ring and crosier, 
and recognized the liberty of elections. But in return it was 
agreed tliat elections should be made in his presence or that 
of his officers, and that the new bishop should receive his 
temporalities from the emperor by the sceptre. 

Both parties in the concordat at Worms receded from so 
much of their pretensions, that we might almost hesitate to 
determine which is to be considered as victorious. On the 
one hand, in restoring the freedom of episcopal elections the 
emperors lost a prerogative of very long standing, and almost 
necessary to the maintenance of authority over not the least 
turbulent part of their subjects. And though the form of 
investiture by the ring and crosier seemed in itself of no im- 
])ortance, yet" it had been in effect a collateral security against 
the election of obnoxious persons. For tlie emperors, detain- 



EcCLES. PowEK. CAPITULAR ELECTIONS. 335 

lag this necessary part of the pontiticals until they should 
confer investiture, prevented a hasty consecration of the new 
bishop, after which, the vacancy being legally filled, it would 
not be decent for them to withhold the temporalities. But 
then, on the other hand, they preserved by the concordat their 
feudal sovereignty over the estates of the Church, in defiance 
of the language Avliich had recently been held by its rulers. 
It is evident that a general immunity from feudal obligaticjiis 
for an order who possessed nearly half the lands in Europe 
struck at the root of those institutions by which the fabric of 
society was j)rincipally held together. This complete indepen- 
dency had been the aim of Gregory's disciples ; and by yield- 
iug to the continuance of lay investitures in any shape Calixtus 
may, in this point of view, appear to have relinquished the 
principal object of contention. 

The emperors were not the only sovereigns Avhose practice 
of investiture excited the hostility of Rome, although they 
sustained the principal brunt of the war. A similar contest 
broke out under the pontificate of Paschal II. with Henry I. 
of England; for the circumstances of which, as they contain 
nothing peculiar, I refer to our own historians. It is remark- 
able that it ended in a compromise not unlike that adjusted 
at Worms ; the king renouncing all sorts of investitures, while 
the pope consented that the bishop should do homage for his 
temporalities. Tliis was exactly the custom of France, where 
investiture by the ring and crosier is said not to have prevailed ; 
and it answered the main end of sovereigns by keeping up the 
feudal dependency of ecclesiastical estates. But the kings of 
Castile were more fortunate than the rest ; discreetly yielding 
to the pride of Rome, they obtained what was essential to 
their own authority, and have always possessed, by the con- 
cession of Urban ll., an absolute privilege of nomination to 
bishoprics in their dominions. An early evidence of that in- 
difference of the ])opes towards the real independence of 
national churches to which subsequent ages were to lend 
abundant confirmation. 

§ 20. When the emperors had surrendered their pretensions 
to interfere in episcopal elections, the primitive mode of col- 
lecting the suffrages of clergy and laity in conjunction, or at 
least of the clergy with the laity's assent and ratilieation, 
ought naturally to have revived. But in the twelfth century 
neither tlie people, nor even the general body of the diocesan 
clergy, were considered as worthy to exercise this function. 
It soon developed altogether upon the chapters of cathedral 



336 GENERAL CONDUCT Chap. VII. Pakt I. 

churches. The original of these may be traced very high. 
In the earliest ages we find a college of presbytery consisting 
of the priests and deacons, assistants as a council of advice, or 
even a kind of parliament, to their bishops. Parochial divis- 
ions, and fixed ministers attached to them, were not estab- 
lished till a later period. But the canons, or cathedral clergy, 
acquired afterwards a more distinct character. They were 
subjected by degrees to certain strict observances, little differ- 
ing, in fact, from those imposed on monastic orders. They 
lived at a common table, they slept in a common dormitory, 
their dress and diet were regulated by })eculiar laws. But 
they were distinguished from monks by the riglit of ]jossessing 
individual property, which was afterwards extended to the 
enjoyment of separate prebends or benefices. These strict 
regvdations, chiefly imposed by Louis the Debonair, went into 
disuse through relaxation of discipline ; nor were they ever 
effectually restored. Meantime the chapters became extremely 
rich, and as they monopolized the privilege of electing bishops, 
it became an object of ambition with noble families to obtain 
canonries for their younger children as the surest road to 
ecclesiastical honors and opulence. Contrary, therefore, to 
the general policy of the Cluirch, persons of inferior birth 
have been rigidly excluded from these foundations. 

§ 21. The object of Gregory VII., in attempting to redress 
those more flagrant abuses which for two centuries had de- 
formed the face of the Latin Church, is not incapable, perhaps, 
of vindication, though no sufficient apology can be offered 
for the means he emi)loyed. But the disinterested love of 
reformation, to which candor might ascribe the contention 
against investitures, is belied by the general tenor of his con- 
duet, exhibiting an arrogance without ])arallel, and an ambi- 
tion that grasj)ed at universal and unlimited monarchy. He 
may be called the common enemy of all sovereigns, whose 
dignity as well as independence mortified his infatuated pride. 
Thus we find him menacing Philip I. of France, who had con- 
nived at the pillage of some Italian merchants and pilgrims, 
not only with an interdict, but a sentence of deposition. Thus, 
too, he asserts, as a known historical fact, that the kingdom of 
Spain had formerly belonged, by special right, to St. Peter ; 
and by virtue of this imprescriptible claim he grants to a cer- 
tain Count de Rouci all territories which he should reconquer 
from the Moors, to be held in fief from the Holy See by a 
stipulated rent. A similar pi'etension he makes to the king- 
dom of Hungary, and bitterly reproaches its sovereign, Solo- 



EccLES. PoAVER. OF GREGORY VII. 337 

moil, who had done homage to the emperor, in derogation of 
St. Peter, his legitimate lord. It was convenient to treat this 
apostle as a great feudal suzerain, and the legal' principles of 
that age were dexterously applied to rivet more forcibly the 
fetters of superstition. 

While temporal sovereigns were opposing so inadequate a 
resistance to a system of usurpation contrary to all precedent 
and to the common principles of society, it was not to be ex- 
pected that national churches should persevere in opposing 
pretensions for which several ages had paved the way. Greg- 
ory VII. completed the destruction of their liberties. The 
principles contained in the decretals of Isidore, hostile as they 
were to ecclesiastical independence, were set aside as insuih- 
cient to establish the absolute monarchy of Kome. By a consti- 
tution of Alexander II., during whose pontificate Hildebrand 
himself was deemed tlie effectual pope, no bishop in the Cath- 
olic Church was permitted to exercise his functions until he 
had received the confirmation of the Holy See : a jirovision of 
vast importance, through wliich, beyond perhaps any other 
means, liome has sustained, and still sustains, her temporal in- 
fluence, as well as her ecclesiastical supremacy. The national 
churches, long abridged of their liberties by gradual encroach- 
ments, now found themselves subject to an undisguised and 
irresistible despotism. Instead of affording protection to 
bishops against their metropolitans, under an insidious pre- 
tence of which the popes of the ninth century had subverted 
the autliority of the latter, it became the favorite policy of 
their successors to harass all prelates with citations to Rome. 
Gregory obliged the metropolitans to attend in person for the 
pallium. Bishops were summoned even from England and the 
]S"ort]iern kingdoms to receive the commands of the spiritual 
monarch. William the Conqueror having made a difficulty 
about permitting his prelates to obey these citations, Gregory 
though in general on good terms with that prince, and treating 
him with a deference whicli marks the effect of a firm chai'ac- 
ter in repressing the ebullitions of overbearing pride, complains 
of this as a persecution unheard of among pagans. The great 
quarrel between Archbishop Anselm and his two sovereigns, 
William Rufus and Henry I., was originally founded upon a 
similar refusal to permit his departure for Rome. 

§ 21i. This perpetual control exercised by the popes over 
ecclesiastical, and in some degree over temporal affairs, was 
maintained by means of their legates, at once the ambassadors 
and the lieutenants of the Holy See. Previously to the latter 



338 ADRIAN IV. Chap. VII. Part I. 

part of the tenth age these had been sent not frequently and 
upon special occasions. The legatiue or vicarial commission 
had generally been iutrusted to some eminent metropolitan of 
the nation within which it was to be exercised ; as the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury was perpetual legate in England. But 
the special commissioners, or legates a latere, suspending the 
pope's ordinary vicars, took ujjon themselves an unbounded 
authority over the national churches, holding councils, promul- 
gating canons, deposing the bishops, and issuing interdicts at 
their discretion. They lived in splendor at the expense of the 
bishops of the province. This was the more galling to the 
hierarchy, because simple deacons were often invested with 
this dignity, which set them above primates. As the sover- 
eigns of France and England acquired more courage, they 
considerably abridged this prerogative of the Holy See, and 
resisted the entrance of any legates into their dominions with- 
out their consent. 

From the time of Gregory VII. no pontiff thought of await- 
ing tlie confirmation of the emperor, as in earlier ages, before 
he was installed in the throne of St. Peter. On the contrary, 
it was pretended that the emperor was himself to be conhrmed 
by the pope. This had, indeed, been broached by John VIII. 
two hundred years before Gregory. It was still a doctrine not 
calculated for general reception ; but the popes availed them- 
selves of every opj^ortunity which the temporizing policy, the 
negligence or bigotry of sovereigns threw into their hands. 
Lothaire coming to receive the imperial crown at Rome, this 
circumstance was commemorated by a picture in the Lateran 
palace, in which, and in two Latin verses subscribed, he was 
represented as doing homage to the pope. When F^-ederick 
Barbarossa came upon the same occasion, he omitted to hold 
the stirrup of Adrian IV., who, in his turn, refused to give 
him the usual kiss of peace ; nor was the 'contest ended but by 
the emperor's acquiescence, who was content to follow tlie pre- 
cedents of his predecessors. The same Adrian, exjiostulating 
with Frederick upon some slight grievance, reminded him of 
the imperial crown which lie had conferred, and declared his 
willingness to bestow, if possible, still greater benehts. But 
the phrase employed (majora beneficia) suggested the idea of a 
fief ; and the general insolence which pervaded Adrian's letter 
confirming this interpretation, a ferment arose among the Ger- 
man princes, in a congress of whom this letter was delivered. 
" From whom, then," one of the legates was rash enough to 
saj^, " does the emperor hold his crown, except from the pope ? " 



EccLES. Power. INNOCENT III. 339 

which so irritated a prince of Wittelsbach that he was with 
difficulty prevented from cleaving the priest's head witli his 
sabre. Adrian IV. was the oidy Englishman that ever sat in 
the papal chair. It might, perhaps, pass for a favor bestowed 
on his natural sovereign, when he granted to Henry II. the 
kingdoni of Ireland ; yet the language of this donation, where- 
in he asserts all islands to be the exclusive property of St. 
I*eter, should not have had a very pleasing sound to an insular 
nionarch. 

§ 23. I shall not wait to comment on the support given to 
Becket by Alexander III., which must be familiar to the Eng- 
lish reader, nor on his speedy canonization ; a reward which 
the Church has always held out to its most active friends, and 
which may be compared to titles of nobility granted by a tem- 
poral sovereign. Uut the epoch when the spirit of papal usur- 
pation was most strikingly displayed was the pontificate of 
Innocent III. (a.d. 1198-1210). In each of the three leading 
objects which Kome has pursued — independent sovereignty, 
supremacy over the Christian Church, control over the princes 
of the earth — it was the fortune of this pontiff to conquer. 
He realized, as we have seen in another place, that fond hope 
of so many of his predecessors, a dominion over Rome and the 
central parts of Italy. During his pontificate Constantinople 
was taken by the Latins ; and however much he might seem to 
regret a diversion of the Crusaders which impeded the recovery 
of the Holy Land, he exulted in the obedience of the new patri- 
arch, and the reunion of the Greek Church, Never, perhaps, 
either before or since, was the great Eastern schism in so fair a 
way of being healed; even the kings of Bulgaria and of Armenia 
acknowledged the supremacy of Innocent, and permitted his 
interference with their ecclesiastical institutions. 

The maxims of Gregory VII. were now matured by more 
than a hundred years, and the right of trampling u|)on the 
necks of kings had been received, at least among Churchmen, 
as an inherent attribute of the papacy. " As the sun and the 
moon are placed in the firmament " (such is the language of 
Innocent), "the greater as the light of the day, and the lesser 
of the night, thus are there two powers in tiie Church — the 
pontifical, which, as having the charge of souls, is the greater ; 
and the royal, which is the less, and to which the bodies of 
men only are intrusted." Intoxicated with these conceptions 
(if we may apply such a word to successful ambition), he 
thought no quarrel of princes beyond the sphere of his juris- 
diction. On every side the thunder of Rome broke over tlie 



340 INNOCENT III. Chap. VII. Part I. 

heads of princes. A certain Swero is excommnnieated for 
usurping the crown of Norway. A legate, in passing through 
Hungary, is detained by the king : Innocent writes in tolera- 
bly mild terms to this potentate, but fails not to intimate that 
he might be compelled to prevent his son's accession to the 
throne. The King of Leon had married his cousin, a princess 
of Castile. Innocent subjects the kingdom to an interdict. 
The king gave way, and sent baek his wife. But a more illus- 
trious victory of the same kind was obtained over Philip Augus- 
tus, who, having repudiated Isemburga of Denmark, had 
contracted another marriage. The conduct of the king, though 
not without the usual excuse of those times, nearness of blood, 
was justly condemned; and Innocent did not hesitate to visit 
his sins upon the people by a general interdict. This, after a 
short demur from some bishops, was enforced throughout 
France ; the dead lay unburi'xl, and tlie living were cut off 
from the offices of religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took baek 
his divorced wife. The submission of such a prince, not feebly 
superstitious, like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with sedi- 
tions, like the Emperor Henry IV., but brave, firm, and victo- 
rious, is perhaps the proudest trophy in the scutcheon of 
Eome. Compared with this, the subsequent triumph of Inno- 
cent over our pusillanimous John seems cheaply gained, though 
the surrender of a powerful kingdom into the vassalage of the 
pope may strike us as a proof of stupendous baseness on one 
side, and audacity on the other." 

I have mentioned already that among the new pretensions 
advanced by the Eoman See was that of confirming the election 
of an emi)eror. It liad, however, been asserted rather inci- 
dentally than in a peremptory manner. But the doubtful 
elections of I'liilip and Otlio after the death of Henry VI. gave 
Innocent III. an opportunity of maintaining more positively 
this pretended right. In a decretal ejtistle addressed to the 
Duke of Ziihringen, the object of which is to direct him to 
transfer his allegiance from Philip to the other competitor, 
Innocent, after stating the mode in which a regular election 
ought so be made, declares the pope's immediate authority to 
examine, confirm, anoint, crown, and consecrate the elect 
emperor, provided he sliall be worthy; or to reject liim if ren- 

" The stipulated annuiil ))avnipnt of 1000 marks was seldom made by the kin^^'s of 
Eiifjfland; but oiio is ulinost ushaiiied tliat it should ever have been so. Hemy 111. 
paid it occasionally when lie had any object to obtain, and even Edward I. for some 
years: the latest payment on record'is in the seventeenth of his reijrn. After a long 
discontinuance, it was demanded in tlie fortieth of Edward III. (i:i()()), but the I'arlia- 
ment unanimously declared that .lohn bail no right to subject tlie kingdom to a su- 
perior without their consent; wliieh put an end forever to the applications. 



EccLES. Power. PAPAL AUTHOPJTY. 341 

dered unfit by great crimes, sucli as sacrilege, heresy, perjury, or 
persecution of the Church ; in default of election, to supply 
the vacancy ; or, in the event of equal suffrages, to bestow the 
empire upon any person at his discretion. The princes of 
Germany were not much influenced by this hardy assumption, 
which manifests the temper of Innocent III. and of his court, 
rather than their power. But Otho IV., at his coronation by 
the pope, signed a capitulation, which cut off several privileges 
enjoyed by the emperors, ever since the concordat of Calixtus, 
in respect of episcopal elections and investitures. 



PART II. 

§ 1. Continual Progress of the Papacy. § 2. Canon Law. § 3. Mendicant Orders. 
§ 4. Dispensing Power. § 5. Encroachments on Rights of Patronage, Mandats, 
Reserves, etc. § 6. Taxation of tlie Clergy. § 7. General Disaffection towards 
the See of Rome in the Tliirteenth Century. §8. Progress of EcclesiasticalJuris- 
diction. §9. Immunity of tlie Clergy in Criminal Cases. §10. Restraints im- 
posed upon their Jurisdiction. §11. Upon their Acquisition of I'roperty. § It!. 
Boniface VIII. His Quarrel witli Philip tlie Fair. Its Termination. § 13. Grad- 
ual Decline of Papal Authority. Removal of the Papal Court to Avisfuon. § 14. 
Louis of Bavaria. § 15. Conduct of Avignon Popes. § 16. Return to Rome. 
Contested Election of Urban and Clement produces the great Schism. § 17. 
Councils of Pisa and Constance. § 18. Council of Basle. § 19. Methods adopted 
to restrain the Papal Usurpations in England, Germany, and France. Liberties 
of the Gallicau Church. § 20. Decline of the Papal Influence in Italy. 

§ 1. The noonday of papal dominion extends from the pon- 
tificate of Innocent III., inclusively, to that of Boniface VIII ; 
or, in otlier words, through the thirteenth century. Rome in- 
spired during this age all the terror of her ancient name. She 
was once more the mistress of the world, and kings were her 
vassals. I have already anticipated the two most conspicuous 
instances when her temporal ambition displayed itself, both of 
which are inseparal)le from tlie civil history of Italy.^ In the 
first of these, her long contention with the house of Suabia, 
she finally triumphed. After his deposition l)y the Council of 
Lyons, the affairs of Frederick II. went rapidly into decay. 
With every allowance for the enmity of the Lombards and the 
jealousies of Germany, it must be confessed that his proscrip- 
tion by Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. was the main cause of 
the ruin of his family. There is, however, no other instance, 
to the best of my judgment, where the pretended right of de- 
posing kings has been successfully exercised. Martin IV. ab- 
solved tlie subjects of Peter of Aragon from their allegiance, 
and transferred his crown to a prince of France ; but they did 

1 See above, chapter iii. 



342 CANON LAW. Chap. VII. Part II. 

not cease to obey their lawful sovereign. I'liis is the second 
instance which the thirteenth century presents of interference 
on the part of the popes in a great temporal quarrel. As 
feudal lords of Naples and Sicily, they had, indeed, some pre- 
text for engaging in the hostilities between the houses of 
Anjou and Aragon, as well as for their contest with Frederick 
II. But the pontiffs of that age, improving upon the system 
of Innocent III., and sangu.ine with j)ast success, aspired to 
render every European kingdom formally dependent upon the 
See of Rome. Thus Boniface VIII., at the instigation of some 
emissaries from Scotland, claimed that monarchy as paramount 
lord, and interposed, though vainly, the sacred panoply of 
ecclesiastical rights to rescue it from the arms of Edward I. 

§ 2. This general supremacy effected by the Roman Church 
over mankind, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, de- 
rived material support from the promulgation of the canon 
law. The foundation of this jurisprudence is laid in the de- 
crees of councils, and in the rescripts or decretal epistles of 
popes to questions propounded upon emergent doubts relative 
to matters of discipline and ecclesiastical economy. As the 
jurisdiction of the spiritual tribunals increased and extended 
to a variety of persons and causes, it became almost necessary 
to establish a uniform system for the regulation of their decis- 
ions. After several minor compilations had appeared, Gratian, 
an Italian monk, published, about the year 1140, his Decretinyi, 
or general collection of canons, papal epistles, and sentences 
of fathers, arranged and digested into titles and chapters, in 
imitation of the Pandects, which very little before had begun 
to be studied again with great diligence. This work of Gra- 
tian, thougli it seems rather an extraordinary performance for 
tlie age when it appeared, has been censured for notorious in- 
correctness as well as inconsistency, and especially for the 
autliority given in it to the false decretals of Isidore, and, con- 
sequently, to the papal supremacy. It fell, however, short of 
wliat Avas required in the progress of that usurpation. Greg- 
ory IX. caused the five books of Decretals to be pu])lished l)y 
Raimond de Fennafort, in 1234. These consist almost entirely 
of rescripts issued by the later popes, especially Alexander 
III., Innocent III., Ilonorius III., and Gregory himself. They 
form the most essential ])art of the canon law — the Decretum 
of Gratian being comparatively obsolete. In these books we 
find a regular and copious system of jurisprudence, derived, in 
a great measure, from the civil law, but with, considerable 
deviation, and possibly improvement. Boniface VIII. added 



EccLES. rowEK. CANON LAW. 343 

a sixth part, thence called the Sext, itself divided into five 
books, in the nature of a supplement to the other five, of whieli 
it follows the arrangement, and composed of decisions prom- 
ulgated since the pontificate of Gregory IX. New constitutions 
wei-e subjoined by Clement V. and John XXII., under the 
name of Clementines and Extravar/antes Joliannis ; and a few 
more of later pontiffs are included in the body of canon law, 
arranged as a second supplement, after the manner of the 
Sext, and called Extravarjantes Communes. 

The study of this code became, of course, obligatory upon 
ecclesiastical judges. It produced a new class of legal prac- 
titioners, or canonists, of whom a great number added, like 
their brethren, the civilians, their illustrations and commen- 
taries, for which the obscurity and discordance of many pas- 
sages, more especially in the Decretum, gave ample scope. 
From the general analogy of the canon law to that of Jus- 
tinian, the two systems became, in a remarkable manner, col- 
lateral and mutually intertwined — the tribunals governed by 
either of them borrowing their rules of decision from the 
other in cases where their peculiar jurisprudence is silent or 
of dubious interpretation. But the canon law was almost 
entirely founded on the legislative authority of the pope ; 
the decretals are, in fact, but a new arrangement of the bold 
epistles of the most usurping pontiffs, and especially of Inno- 
cent III., with titles, or rubrics, comprehending the substance 
of each in the compiler's language. The superiority of ec- 
clesiastical to temporal power, or at least the absolute inde- 
pendence of the former, may be considered as a sort of key-note 
which regulates every passage in the canon laAv. It is ex- 
pressly declared that subjects owe no allegiance to an ex- 
communicated lord, if after admonition he is not reconciled 
to the Church. And the rubric prefixed to the declaration 
of Frederick II. 's deposition in the Council of Lyons, asserts 
that the pope may dethrone the emperor for lawful causes. 
These rubrics to the decretals are not, perhaps, of direct 
authority as part of the law ; but they express its sense, so as 
to be fairly cited instead of it. By means of her new juris- 
prudence, Rome acquired in every country a powerful body 
of advocates, who though many of them were laymen, would 
with the usual bigotry of lawyers, defend every pretension 
or abuse to which their received standard of authority gave 
sanction. 

§ 3. Xext to the canon law, I should reckon tlie institution 
of the mendicant orders among those circumstances which 



344 MENDICANT ORDERS. Cuap. VII. Paist II. 

principally contributed to the aggrandizement of Rome. By 
the acquisition, and in some respects tlie enjoyment, or at 
least ostentation, of immense riches, the ancient monastic 
orders had forfeited much of the public esteem. Austere prin- 
ciples as to the obligation of evangelical poverty were incul- 
cated by the numerous sectaries of that age, and eagerly 
received by the people, already much alienated from an es- 
tablished hierarchy. No means appeared so efficacious to 
counteract tliis effect as the institution of religious societies 
strictly debarred from the insidious temptations of wealth. 
Upon this principle were founded the orders of mendicant 
friars, incapable, by the rules of their foundation, of possessing 
estates, and maintained only by alms and pious remunerations. 
Of these the two most celebrated were formed by St. Dominick 
and St. Francis of Assisi, and established by the authority of 
Honorius III. in 1216 and 1223. These great reformers who 
have produced so extraordinary an effect vipon mankind, were 
of very different characters ; the one, active and ferocious, had 
taken a prominent part in the crusade against the unfortunate 
Albigeois, and was amoug the tirst who bore the terrible name 
of incpiisitor ; while the other, a harmless enthusiast, pious and 
sincere, but hai-dly of sane mind, Avas much rather accessory 
to the intellectual than to the moral degradation of his species. 
Various other mendicant orders Avere instituted in the thir- 
teenth century ; but most of them were soon suppressed, and, 
besides the two principal, none remain but the Augustin and 
the Carmelite. 

These new preachers were received with astonishing appro- 
bation by the laity, whose religious zeal usually depends a good 
deal upon their opinion of sincerity and disinterestedness in 
their pastors. And the progress of the Dominican and Fran- 
ciscan friars in the thirteenth century bears a remarkable an- 
alogy to that of our English Methodists. Not deviating from 
the faith of the Church, but professing rather to teach it in 
greater purity, and to observe her ordinances with greater reg- 
ularity, while they imputed supineness and corruption to the 
secular clergy, they drew round their sermons a multitude of 
such listeners as in all ages are attracted by similar means. 
They practised all the stratagems of itinerancy, preaching in 
public streets, and administering the communion on a portable 
altar. Thirty years after their institution an historian com- 
plains that the ])arish churches were deserted, that none con- 
fessed except to these friars — in short, that the regular 
discipline was subverted. This uncontrolled privilege of per- 



EccLES. PowEK. PAPAL DISPENSATIONS. 345 

forming sacerdotal functions, which their modern anti-types 
assume for themselves, was conceded to the mendicant orders 
by the favor of Rome. Aware of the powerful support they 
might receive in turn, the pontilfs of the thirteenth century 
accumulated benefits u[)on the disciples of Francis and Dom- 
inick. They were exem})ted from episcopal authority ; they 
were permitted to preach or hear confessions without leave of 
the ordinary, to accept of legacies, and to inter in their 
churches. Such privileges could not be granted without resist- 
ance from the other clergy ; the bishops remonstrated, the 
University of Paris maintained a strenuous opposition; but 
their reluctance served only to. protract the final decision. 
Boniface VIII. appears to have peremptorily established the 
privileges and immunities of the mendicant orders in 1295. 

It was naturally to be expected that the objects of such ex- 
tensive favors would repay their benefactors by a more than 
usual obsequiousness and alacrity in their service. Accord- 
ingly, tlie Dominicans and Franciscans vied with each other 
in magnifying the i)apal supremacy. Many of these monks 
became eminent in canon law and scholastic theology. The 
great lawgiver of the schools, Thomas Aquinas, wliose opin- 
ions the Dominicans especially treat as almost infallible, went 
into the exaggerated principles of his age in favor of the See 
of Rome. And as the professors of those sciences took nearly 
all the learning and logic of the times to their own share, it 
was hardly possible to repel their arguments by any direct 
reasoning. But this partiality of the new monastic orders to 
the popes must chiefly be understood to apply to the thirteenth 
century, circumstances occurring in the next which gave in 
some degree a different complexion to their dispositions in re- 
spect of the Holy See. 

§ 4. We should not overlook, among the causes that con- 
tributed to the dominion of the popes, their prerogative of dis- 
pensing with ecclesiastical ordinances. The most remarkable 
exercise of this was as to the canonical impediments of matri- 
mony. Such strictness as is prescribed by the Christian 
religion with respect to divorce was very unpalatable to the 
barbarous nations. They, in fact, paid it little regard ; under 
the Merovingian dynasty, even private men put away their 
wives at pleasure. In many capitidaries of Charlemagne we 
find evidence of the prevailing license of repudiation and even 
polygamy. The principles wliich the Church inculcated were 
in a})})earance the very reverse of this laxity ; yet they led in- 
directly to the same effect. Marriages were forbidden, not 



346 PArAL DISPENSATIONS. Cuap. VII. Part II. 

merely within the limits which nature, or those inveterate 
associations which we call nature, have rendered sacred, but 
as far as the seventh degree of collateral consanguinity, com- 
puted from a common ancestor. Not only was attinity, or 
relationship by marriage, put upon the same footing as that 
by blocjd, but a fantastical connection, called spiritual affinity, 
Avas invented in order to prohibit marriage between a sponsor 
and godchild. A union, however innocently contracted, be- 
tween parties thus circumstanced might at any time be dis- 
solved, and their subsequent cohabitation forbidden. One 
readily a})prehends the facilities of abuse to which all this 
led; and history is full of dissolutions of marriage, ol)tained 
by fickle passion or cold-hearted ambition, to which the Church 
has not scrupled to pander on some suggestion of relationship. 
It was not until the twelfth century that either these laws as 
to marriage or any other established rules of discipline were 
su[)posed liable to arbitrary dispensation ; at least tlie stricter 
Churchmen had always denied that the pope couhl infringe 
canons, nor liad he asserteil any right to do so. But Iiniocent 
III. laid down as a maxim, that out of the ])lenitude of his 
power he might lawfully dispense with the law ; and accord- 
ingly granted, among other instances of his prerogative, dis- 
pensations froni impediments of marriage to the Emperor 
Otlio IV. Similar indulgences were given by his successors, 
though they did not become usual for some ages. The fourth 
Lateran Council, in 1215, removed a great part of the restraint, 
by permitting marriages beyond the fourth degree, or what we 
call third-cousins ; and dispensations have been made more 
easy, when it was discovered that they might be converted 
into a source of profit. They served a more important pur- 
pose by rendering it necessary for the princes of Europe, who 
S(ddom could marry into one another's houses without trans- 
gressing the canonical limits, to keep on good terms with the 
Court of Home, which, in several instances that have been 
mentioned, fulminated its censures against sovereigns who 
lived without permission in what was considered an incestuous 
union. 

The dispensing ]>ower of the popes was exerted in several 
cases of a tem})oral natiire, particularly in the legitinuition of 
children, for purposes even of succession. This Innocent III. 
claimed as an indirect consequence of his right to remove the 
canonical impediment which bastardy offered to ordination ; 
since it would be monstrous, he says, that one who is legiti- 
mate for spiritual functions should continue otherwise in any 



EccLES. Power. PAPAL ENCROACHMENTS. 347 

civil matter. But the most important and miscluevous species 
of dispensations was from the observance of promissory oaths. 
Two principles are laid down in the decretals — that an oath 
disadvantageous to the Church is not binding ; and that one 
extorted by force was of slight obligation, and might be an- 
nulled by ecclesiastical authority, As the first of these 
maxims gave the most unlimited privilege to the popes of 
breaking all faith of treaties which thwarted their interest or 
passion, a privilege which they continually exercised, so the 
second was equally convenient to princes weary of observing 
engagements towards their subjects or their neighbors. They 
protested with a bad grace against the absolution of their 
people from allegiance by an authority to which they did not 
scruple to repair in order to bolster up their own perjuries. 
Thus Edward I.; the strenuous asserter of his temporal rights, 
and one of the iirst who opposed a barrier to the encroach- 
ments of the clergy, sought at the hands of Clement V. a dis- 
pensation from his oath to observe the great statute against 
arbitrary taxation. 

§ 5. In all the earlier stages of papal dominion the supreme 
head of the Church had been her guardian and protector : and 
this beneficent character appeared to receive its consummation 
in the result of that arduous struggle which restored the 
ancient practice of free election to ecclesiastical dignities. 
Not long, however, after this triumph had been obtained, the 
popes began by little and little to interfere with the regular 
constitution. Their first step was conformable, indeed, to the 
prevailing system of spiritual independency. By the con- 
cordat of Calixtus it appears that the decision of contested 
elections was reserved to the emperor, assisted by the metro- 
politan and suffragans. But it was consonant to the prejudices 
of that age to deem the supreme pontiff a more natural judge, 
as in other cases of appeal. The point was early settled in 
England, where a doubtful election to the archbishopric of 
York, under Stephen, was referred to Rome, and there kept 
five years in litigation. Otho IV. surrendered this, among 
other rights of the empire, to Innocent III. by his capitula- 
tion; and from that pontificate the papal jurisdiction over 
such controversies became thoroughly recognized. But the 
real aim of Innocent, and perliaps of some of his predeces- 
sors, was to dispose of bishoprics, under pretext of determin- 
ing contests, as a matter of patronage. So many rules were 
established, so many formalities required by their constitutions, 
incorporated afterwards into the canon law, that the Court of 



348 MANDATS. Chap. VII. Paut II. 

Rome might easily find means of annulling what had been 
done by the chapter, and bestowing the see on a favorite can- 
didate. The popes soon assumed not only a right of decision, 
but of devolution ; that is, of supplying the want of election, 
or the unfitness of the elected, by a nomination of their own. 
Thus Archbishop Langton, if not absolutely nominated, was 
at least chosen in an invalid and compulsory manner by the 
order of Innocent III., as we may read in our English his- 
torians. And several succeeding archbishops of Canterbury 
equally owed their promotion to the papal prerogative. Some 
instances of the same kind occurred in Germany, and it became 
the constant practice in Naples. 

While the popes were thus artfully depriving the chapters 
of their right of election to bishoprics, they interfered in a 
more arbitrary manner with the collation of inferior benefices. 
This began, though in so insensible a manner as to deserve no 
notice but for its consequences, with Adrian IV., who requested 
some bishops to confer the next benefice that should become 
vacant on a particular clerk. Alexander III. used to solicit 
similar favors. These recommendatory letters were called 
Mandats. But though such requests grew more frequent than 
was acceptable to patrons, they were preferred in moderate 
language, and could not decently be refused to the apostolic 
chair. But, as we find in the history of all usurping govern- 
ments, time changes anomaly into system, and injury into 
right ; examples beget custom, and custom ripens into law ; 
and the doubtful precedent of one generation becomes the 
fundamental maxim of another. No country was so intoler- 
ably treatetl by the po})es as England throughout the ignomini- 
ous reign of Henry III. Her Church seemed to have been so 
richly endowed only as the free pasture of Italian priests, who 
were placed by the mandatory le.tters of Gregory IX. and 
Innocent IV., in all the best benefices. If we may trust a 
solemn remonstrance in the name of the whole nation, they 
drew from England, in the middle of the thirteenth century, 
sixty or seventy thousand marks every year — a sum far ex- 
ceeding the royal revenue. This was asserted by the English 
envoys at the Council of Lyons. But the remedy was not to 
be sought in remonstrances to the Court of Rome, which 
exulted in the success of its encroachments. There was no 
defect of spirit in the nation to oppose a more adequate re- 
sistance ; but the weak-minded individual upon the throne 
sacrificed the public interest sometimes through habitual ti- 
midity, sometimes through silly ambition. If England, how- 



EccLES. Power. PROVISIONS AND RESERVES. 349 

ever, suffered more remarkably, yet other countries were far 
from being untouched. A German writer about the beginning 
of the fourteenth century mentions a cathedral where, out of 
about thirty-five vacancies of prebends that had occurred 
within twenty years, the regular patron had filled only two. 
The case was not very different in France, where the continual 
usurpations of the popes produced the celebrated Pragmatic 
Sanction of St. Louis (a.d. 1268). This edict contains three 
important provisions ; namely, that all prelates and other 
patrons shall enjoy their full rights as to the collation of bene- 
fices, according to the canons ; that churches shall possess 
freely their rights of election ; and that no tax or pecuniary 
exaction shall be levied by the pope, without consent of the 
king and of the national Church. We do not find, however, 
that the French government acted up to the spirit of this 
ordinance ; and the Holy See continued to invade the rights 
of collation with less ceremony than they had hitherto used. 
Clement IV. published a bull in 12G6, Avhich, after asserting 
an absolute prerogative of the supiteme pontiff to dispose of 
all preferments, whether vacant or ifi reversion, confines itself 
in the enacting words to the reservation of such benefices as 
belong to persons dying at Eome (vacantes in curia). These 
had for some time been reckoned as a part of the pope's 
special patronage ; and their number, when all causes of im- 
portance were drawn to his tribunal, when metropolitans were 
compelled to seek their pallium in person, and even, by a 
recent constitution, exempt abbots were to repair to Home for 
confirmation, not to mention the multitude who flocked thither 
as mere courtiers and hunters after promotion, must have 
been very considerable. Boniface VIII. repeated this law of 
Clement IV. in a still more positive tone ; and Clement V. 
laid down as a maxim, that the pope might freely bestow, as 
universal patron, all ecclesiastical benefices. In order to 
render these tenable by their Italian courtiers, the canons 
against pluralities and non-residence Avere dispensed with ; so 
that individuals were said to have accumulated fifty or sixty 
preferments. It was a consequence from this extravagant 
principle, that the pope might prevent the ordinary collator 
upon a vacancy ; and, as this could seldom be done with suf- 
ficient expedition in places remote from his court, that he 
might make reversionary grants during the life of an incum- 
bent, or reserve certain benefices specifically for his own 
nomination. 

§ 6. The persons as well as estates of ecclesiastics were 



350 PAPAL TAXATION. Chap. VII. PAirr 11. 

secure from arbitrary taxation in all kingdoms founded upon 
the ruins of the empire, both by the common liberties of free- 
men and more particularly by their own immunities and the 
horror of sacrilege. Such, at least, was their legal security, 
whatever violence might occasionally be practised by tyran- 
nical princes. l>ut this exemptiom was compensated by an- 
nual donatives, probably to a large amount, which the bishops 
and monasteries were accustomed, and as it were compelled, 
to make to their sovereigns. They were subject also, generally 
speaking, to the feudal services and prestations. Henry I. is 
said to have extorted a sum of money from the English Church. 
But the first eminent instance of a general tax required from 
the clergy was the famous Saladine tithe — a tenth of all mov- 
able estate, imposed by the kings of France and England upon 
all their subjects, with the consent of their great councils of 
prelates and barons, to defray the expense of their intended 
crusade. Yet even this contribution, though called for by the 
imminent peril of the Holy Land after the capture of Jeru- 
salem, was not paid without reluctance, the clergy doubtless 
anticipating the future extension of such a precedent. Many 
years had not elapsed when a new demand was made upon 
them, but from a different quarter. Innocent III. (the name 
continually recurs when we trace the commencement of an 
usurpation) imposed in 1199 upon the whole Church a tribute 
of one-fortieth of movable estate, to be paid to his own collect- 
ors ; but strictly pledging himself that the money should only 
be applied to the purposes of a crusade. This crusade ended, 
as is well known, in the capture of Constantinople. But the 
word had lost much of its original meaning ; or rather, that 
meaning had been extended by ambition and bigotry. Greg- 
ory IX. preached a crusade against the Emperor Frederick, in 
a quarrel which only concerned his temporal principality ; and 
the Church of England was taxed, by his authority, to carry 
on this holy Avar. After some opposition the bishops sub- 
mitted, and from that time no bounds were set to the rapacity 
of papal exactions. The usurers of Cahors and Lombardy, 
residing in London, took up the trade of agency for tlie pope ; 
and in a few years he is said, partly by levies of money, partly 
by the revenues of benefices, to have plundered the kingdom 
of 950,000 marks ; a siim equivalent, perhaps, to not less than 
fifteen millions sterling at present. Henry III.'s pusillanimity 
would not permit any effectual measures to be adopted ; and in- 
deed he sometimes shared in the booty, and was indulged with 
the produce of taxes imposed upon his own clergy to defray 



EccLES. Power. DISAFFECTION TO THE CHURCH. 351 

the cost of his projected wai- against Sicily. A nobler exam- 
ple was set by the kingdom of Scotland : Clement IV. having, 
in 1267, granted the tithes of its ecclesiastical revenues for 
one of his mock crusades, King Alexander III., with the con- 
currence of the Church, stood up against this encroachment, 
and refused the legate permission to enter his dominions. 

§ 7. These gross invasions of ecclesiastical property, how- 
ever submissively endured, produced a very general disaffec- 
tion towards the Court of Rome. Pillaged upon every slight 
pretence, without law and without redress, the clergy came to 
regard their once patery^al monarch as an arbitrary oppressor. 
All writers of the thirteenth and following centuries complain, 
in terms of unmeasured indignation, and seem almost ready to 
reform the general abuses of the Ciiurch. They distinguished, 
however, clearly enoiigh between the abuses which oppressed 
them and those which it was their interest to preserve, nor 
had the least intention of waiving their own immunities and 
authority. But the laity came to more universal conclusions. 
A spirit of inveterate hatred grew up among them, not only 
towards the papal tyranny, but the wdiole system of ecclesias- 
tical independence. The rich envied and longed to plunder 
the estates of the superior clergy ; the poor learned from the 
Waldenses and other sectaries to deem such opulence incom- 
patible with the character of evangelical ministers. The 
itinerant minstrels invented tales to satirize vicious priests, 
which a predisposed multitude eagerly swallowed. If the 
thirteenth century was an age of more extravagant ecclesiasti- 
cal pretensions than any which had preceded, it was certainly 
one in which the disposition to resist them acquired greater 
consistence. 

§ 8. To resist had, indeed, become strictly necessary, if the 
temporal governments of Christendom would occupy any bet- 
ter station than that of officers to the hierarchy. About the 
beginning of the twelfth century the ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
had rapidly encroached upon the secular tribunals, and seemed 
to threaten the usurpation of an exclusive supremacy over all 
persons and causes. The bishops gave the tonsure indiscrim- 
inately, in order to swell the list of their subjects. This sign 
of a clerical state, though below the lowest of their seven 
degrees of ordination, implying no spiritual office, conferred 
the privileges and immunities of the profession on all who 
wore an ecclesiastical habit and had only once been married. 
Orphans and widows, the stranger and the poor, the pilgrim 
and the leper, under the appellation of persons in distress 



352 ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION Chap. VII. Part IL 

(miserabiles personae), came within the peculiar cognizance 
and protection of the Ciiurch ; nor could they be sued before 
any lay tribunal. And tlie whole body of crusaders, or such 
as merely took the vow of engaging in a crusade, enjoyed the 
same clerical privileges. 

But wliere the character of the litigant parties could not, 
even with this large construction, be brought within their 
pale, the bishops found a pretext for their jurisdiction in the 
nature of the dispute. Spiritual causes alone, it was agreed, 
could appertain to the spiritual tribunal. But the word was 
indefinite ; and according to the interpreters of the twelfth 
century the Church was always bound to prevent and chastise 
the commission of sin. By this sweeping maxim, which we 
have seen Innocent III. apply to vindicate his control over 
national quarrels, the common differences of individuals, which 
generally involve some charge of wilful injury, fell into the 
hands of a religious judge. One is almost surprised to find 
that it did not extend more universally, and might praise the 
moderation of the Church. Real actions, or suits relating to 
tlie property of land, were always the exclusive province of 
the lay court, even where a clerk was the defendant. But the 
ecclesiastical tribunals took cognizance of breaches of contract, 
at least Avhere an oath had been pledged, and of personal 
trusts. They had not only an exclusive jurisdiction over 
questions immediately matrimonial, but a concurrent one with 
the civil magistrate in France, though never in England, over 
matters incident to the nuptial contract, as claims of marriage- 
portion and of dower. They took the execution of testaments 
into their hands, on account of the legacies to pious uses 
which testators were advised to bequeath. In process of time, 
and under favorable circumstances, they made still greater 
strides. They pretended a right to supply the defects, the 
doul)ts, or the negligence of temporal judges ; and invented a 
class of mixed causes, whereof the lay or ecclesiastical juris- 
diction took possessicm according to priority. Besides this 
extensive authority in civil disputes, they judged of some 
offences which naturally belong to tlie criminal law, as well as 
of some others which participate of a civil and criminal 
nature. Such were perjury, sacrilege, usury, incest, and adul- 
tery, from the punisliment of all which the secular magistrate 
refrained, at least in England, after tliey had become the 
])rovince of a separate jurisdiction. Excommunication still 
continued the only chastisement which the Church could 
directly inflict. But the bishops acquired a right of having 



EccLES. Power. AND IMMUNITY. 353 

their own prisons fur lay offenders, and the monasteries were 
the appropriate prisons of clerks. Their sentences of excom- 
munication were enforced by the temporal magistrate by 
imprisonment or sequestration of effects ; in some cases by 
confiscation or death. 

§ 9. The clergy did not forget to secure along with this 
jurisdiction their own absolute exemption from the criminal 
justice of the state. This had been conceded to them by 
Charlemagne ; and this privilege was not enjoyed by clerks in 
England before the Conquest ; nor do we find it proved by any 
records long afterwards ; though it seems, by what we read 
about the constitutions of Clarendon, to have grown into use 
before the reign of Henry II. About the middle of the twelfth 
century the principle obtained general reception, and Innocent 
III. decided it to be an inalienable right of the clergy, whereof 
they could not be divested even by their own consent. Much 
less were any constitutions of princes, or national usages, 
deemed of force to abrogate such an important privilege. 
These, by the canon law, were invalid when they affected the 
rights and liberties of Holy Church. But the spiritual courts 
were charged with scandalously neglecting to visit the most 
atrocious offences of clerks with such punishment as they 
could inflict. The Churcli could always absolve from her own 
ceneures ; and confinement in a monastery, the usual sentence 
upon criminals, was frequently slight and temporary. Several 
instances are mentioned of heinous outrages that remained 
nearly unpunished through the shield of ecclesiastical privi- 
lege. And as the temporal courts refused their assistance to 
a rival jurisdiction, the clergy had no redress for their own 
injuries, and even the murder of a priest, at one time, as we 
are told, was only punishable by excomm;inication. 

§ 10. Such an incoherent medley of laws and magistrates, 
upon the symmetrical arrangement of which all social economy 
mainly depends, could not fail to produce a violent collision. 
Every sovereign was interested in vindicating the authority of 
the constitution wliich had been formed by his ancestors, or by 
the peo})le whom he governed. But the first who undertook 
this arduous work, the first who appeared openly against eccle- 
siastical tyranny, was our Henry II. That king, in the consti- 
tutions of Clarendon, attempted in three respects to limit the 
jurisdiction assumed by the Church ; asserting for his own 
judges the cognizance of contracts, however confirmed by oath, 
and of rights of advowson, and also that of offences committed 
by clerks, whom, as it is gently expressed, after conviction or 



354 ENDEAVORS TO REPRESS Chap. VII. Part II. 

confession the Cliurch ought not to protect. These constitu- 
tions were the leading sul)ject of difference between the king 
and Thomas a Becket. Most of them were annulled by the 
pope, as derogatory to ecclesiastical liberty. It is not improb- 
able, however, that, if Louis VII. had played a more dignified 
part, the See of Rome, which an existing schism rendered 
dependent upon the favor of those two monarchs, might have 
receded in some measure from her pretensions. But, France 
implicitly giving way to the encroachments of ecclesiastical 
power, it became impossible for Henry completely to with- 
stand them. 

The constitutions of Clarendon, however, produced some 
effect, and in the reign of Henry III. more unremitted and 
successful efforts began to be made to maintain the indepen- 
dence of temporal government. The judges of the King's 
Court had until that time been themselves principally ecclesi- 
astics, and consequently tender of spiritual privileges. But 
now, abstaining from the exercise of temporal jurisdiction, in 
obedience to the strict injunctions of their canons, the clergy 
gave place to common lawyers, professors of a system very 
discordant from their own. These soon began to assert the 
supremacy of their jurisdiction by issuing writs of prohibition 
whenever the ecclesiastical tribunals passed the boundaries 
which approved use had established. Little accustomed to 
such control, the proud hierarchy chafed under the bit ; seve- 
ral provincial synods protest against the pretensions of lay- 
men to judge the anointed ministers whom they were bound to 
obey ; the cognizance of rights of patronage and breaches of 
contract is boldly asserted ; but firm and cautious, favored by 
the nobility, though not much by the king, the judges receded 
not a step, and ultimately fixed a barrier which the Church 
was forced to respect. In the ensuing reign of Edward I., an 
archbishop acknowledges the abstract right of the King's 
Bench to issue })rohibitions ; and the statute entitled Circvm- 
specte ar/atis,^ in the thirteenth year of that prince, while by 
its mode of expression it seems designed to guarantee the 
actual privileges of spiritiial jurisdiction, had a tendency, espec- 
ially with the disposition of the judges, to preclude tlie asser- 
tion of some which are not therein mentioned. Neither the 
right of advowson nor any temporal contract is specified in 
this act as pertaining to the Church ; and accordingly the tem- 

2 Tlie statute Circiimxpecte nff/i/is, for it is ncknowleiljipd as a statute, tlii)n.i;1i not 
dr:iwii up in the form of one, is fnundid upon an answer of Edward 1. to tlie pielates 
wlio bad petitioned for some modilication ofproliibitions. 



EccLES. Power. ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION". 355 

poral courts have ever since niaiutaiued an undisputed juris- 
diction over them. Tliey succeeded also partially in prevent- 
ing the impunity of crimes perpetrated by clerks. It was 
enacted by the statute of Westminster, in 1275, or rather a 
construction was put upon that act, which is obscurely worded, 
that clerks indicted for felony should not be delivered to 
their ordinary until an inquest had been taken of the matter 
of accusation ; and, if they were found guilty, that their real 
and personal estate should be forfeited to the crown. 

§ 11. The vast accpiisitions of landed wealth made for many 
ages by bishops, chapters, and monasteries, began at length to 
excite the jealousy of sovereigns. They perceived that, al- 
though the prelates might send their stipulated proportion of 
vassals into the field, yet there could not be that active co- 
operation Avhicli the spirit of feudal tenures required, and th-it 
the national arm was palsied by the diminution of military 
nobles. Again, the reliefs \ipon succession, and similar dues 
upon alienation, incidental to fiefs, were entirely lost when 
they came into the hands of these undying corporations, to the 
serious injury of the feudal superior. ISTor could it escape 
reflecting men, during the contest about investitures, that, if 
the Church peremptorily denied the supremacy of the state 
over her temporal wealth, it was but a just measure of retalia- 
tion, or rather self-defence, that the state should restrain her 
further acquisitions. Prohibitions of gifts in mortmain, thougli 
unknown to the lavish devotion of the new kingdoms, had 
been established by some of the Roman emperors to check the 
overgrown wealth of the hierarchy. The first attempt at a 
limitation of this description in modern times was made by 
Frederick Barbarossa Avho, in 1158, enacted that no fief should 
be transferred, either to the Church or otherwise, without the 
permission of the superior lord. Louis IX. inserted a provision 
of the same kind in his Estal)lishments. Castile had also laws 
of a similar tendency. A license from the crown is said to 
have been necessary in England, before the Conquest, for 
alienation in mortmain ; but however that may be, there seems 
no reason to imagine that any restraint was put upon them by 
the common law before Magna Charta — a clause of which 
statute was construed to prohibit all gifts to religious houses 
without the consent of the lord of the fee. And by the 7th 
Edward I. alienations in mortmain are absolutely taken away ; 
though the king might always exercise his prerogative of grant- 
ing a license, which was not supposed to be affected by the 
statute. 



356 BONIFACE VIII. Chap. YII. Part II. 

§ 12. It nii;st appear, I think, to every careful inquirer that 
the papal authority, though manifesting outwardly more show 
of strength every year, had been secretly undermined, and lost 
a great deal of its hold upon public 0})inion, before the accession 
of Boniface VIII., in 1294, to the pontilical throne. The clergy 
were rendered sullen by demands of money, invasions of the 
legal right of patronage, and unreasonable partiality to the 
mendicant orders ; a part of the mendicants themselves had 
begun to declaim against the corruptions of the papal court ; 
while the laity, subjects alike and sovereigns, looked upon 
both the head and the members of the hierarchy with jealousy 
and dislike. Boniface, full of inordinate arrogance and am- 
bition, and not sufficiently sensible of this gradual change in 
human opinion, endeavored to strain to a higher pitch the 
despotic pretensions of former pontiffs. As Gregory VII. 
appears the most usurping of mankind till we read the history 
of Innocent III., so Innocent III. is thrown into shade by the 
superior audacity of Boniface VIII. But independently of 
the less favorable dispositions of the public, he wanted the 
most essential quality for an ambitious pope — reputation for 
integrity. He was suspected of having procured through fraud 
the resignation of his ju-edecessor, Celestine V.. and his harsh 
treatment of that worthy man afterwards seems to justify the 
reproach. His actions, however, display the intoxication of 
supreme self-contidence. If we may credit some historians, 
he appeared at the Jubilee in 1300 — a festival successfully 
instituted by himself to throw lustre around his court and fill 
his treasury^ — dressed in imperial habits, with the two swords 
borne before him, emldems of his temporal as w^ell as spiritual 
dominion over tlie earth. 

It was not long after his elevation to the pontificate before 
Boniface displayed his temper. The two most powerful sov- 
ereigns of Europe, l*hilip the Fair and Edward I., began at tlie 
same moment to attack in a very arbitrary manner the revenues 
of the Cliurch. The English clergy had, by their oavu volun- 
tary grants, or at least those of the prelates in their iiame, 
paid frequent subsidies to the crown from the beginning of the 
reign of Henry III. They had nearly in effect waived the 
ancient exemption, and retained only the common privilege of 
Englisli freemen to tax themselves in a constitutional manner. 
But Edward I. came upon them with demands so frequent and 

3 The .Jubilee was a centenary commemoration in honor of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
establislied by Boniface VIII. on tlie faith of an imaginary precedent a century be- 
fore. The period was soon reduced to fifty years, and fri)ni llicnce to twenty-live, as 
it still continues. 



EccLES. Power. DISPUTES OF BONIFACE VIII. •^•'^7 

exorbitant, that tliey were compelled to take advantage of a 
bull issued by Boniface, forbidcling them to pay any contribu- 
tion to the state. The king disregarded every pretext, and 
seizing their goods into his hands, with other tyrannical pro- 
ceedings, ultimately for(>,ed them to acquiesce in his extortion. 
It is remarkable that the pope appears to have been })assive 
throughout tliis contest of Edward I. with his clergy. But it 
was far otherwise in France. Philip the Fair had imposed a 
tax on the ecclesiastical order without their consent, a measure 
perhaps unprecedented, yet not more odious than the similar 
exactions of the King of England. Irritated by some previous 
differences, the pope issued his bull known by the initial words 
Clericis laicos, absolutely forbidding the clergy of every king- 
dom to pay, under whatever })retext of voluntary grant, gift, 
or loan, any sort of tribute to their government, without his 
special permission. Though France was not particularly named, 
the king understood himself to be intended, and took his re- 
venge by a prohibition to export money from the kingdom. 
This produced angry remonstrances on the part of Boniface ; 
but the Galilean Church adhered so faithfully to the crown, 
and showed, indeed, so much willingness to be spoiled of their 
money, that he could not insist upon the most unreasonable 
propositions of his bull, and ultimately allowed that the French 
clergy might assist their sovereign by voluntary contributions, 
though not by way of tax. 

For a very few years after these circumstances the pope and 
king of France appeared reconciled to each other ; and the 
latter even referred his disputes with Edward I. to the arbi- 
tration of Boniface, " as a private person, Benedict of Gaeta 
(his proper name), and not as pontiff ; " an almost nugatory 
precaution against his encroachment i;pon temporal authority. 
But a terrible storm broke out in the first year of the four- 
teenth century. A bishop of Bamiers, who had been sent as 
legate from Boniface with some complaint, displayed so much 
insolence and such disrespect towards tlie king, that IMiili}x 
considering him as his own subject, was provoked to put him 
under arrest, with the view to institute a criminal process. 
Boniface, incensed beyond measure at this violation of ecclesi- 
astical and legatine privileges, published several bulls ad- 
dressed to the king and clergy of France, charging the former 
with a variety of offences, some of them not at all concerning 
the Church, and commanding the latter to attend a council 
which he had summoned to meet at Rome. In one of these 
instruments, the genuineness of which does not seem li;d)le to 



358 DISPUTES OF BONIFACE VIII. Chap. VII. Part II. 

inueli exception, he declares in concise and clear terms that 
the king was subject to him in temporal as well as spiritual 
matters. This proposition had not hitherto been explicitly 
advanced, and it was now too late to advance it. Philip re- 
plied by a short letter in the rudest language, and ordered 
his bulls to be publicly burned at Paris. Determined, how- 
ever, to show the real strength of his opposition, he summoned 
representatives from the three orders of his kingdom. This 
is commonly reckoned the iirst assembly of the States-General. 
The nobility and commons disclaimed with firmness the tem- 
poral authority of the pope, and conveyed their sentiments to 
Rome through letters addressed to the college of cardinals. 
The clergy endeavored to steer a middle course, and were re- 
luctant to enter into an engagement not to obey the pope's 
summons ; yet they did not hesitate unequivocally to deny his 
temporal jurisdiction. 

The council, lioAvever, opened at Rome ; and notwithstand- 
ing the king's absolute prohibition, many French prelates held 
themselves bound to be present. In this assembly Poniface 
l)romulgated his famous constitution, denominated Unam sanc- 
tam. The church is one body, he therein declares, and has 
one head. Under its command are two swords, the one spirit- 
ual, the other temporal ; that to be used by the supreme pon- 
tiff himself ; this by kings and knights, by his license and at 
his will. But the lesser sword must be subject to the greater, 
and the temporal to the spiritual authority. He concludes by 
declaring the subjection of every human being to the See of 
Rome to be an article of necessary faith. Another bull pro- 
nounces all persons of whatever rank obliged to appear when 
personally cited before the audience or apostolical tribunal at 
Rome ; " since such is our pleasure, who, by divine permission, 
riile the world." Finally as the rupture of Philip grew more 
evidently irreconcilai)le, and the measures pursued by that 
monarch more hostile, he not only excommunicated him, but 
offered the crown of France to the Emperor Albert I. This 
arbitrary transference of kingdoms was, like many other pre- 
tensions of that age, an improvement upon the right of depos- 
ing excommunicated sovereigns. Gregory VII. would not have 
denied that a nation released by his authority from its alle- 
giance must re-enter upon its original right of electing a new 
sovereign. But Martin IV. had assigned the crown of Aragon 
to Charles of Valois ; the first instance, I think, of such an 
usurpation of power, but which was defended by the homage 
of Peter II., who had rendered his kingdom feudally depend- 



EccLES. Power. WITH THE KING OF FKANCE. 359 

ent, like Naples, upon the Holy See. Albert felt no eagerness 
to realize the liberal promises of Boniface ; who was on the 
point of issuing a bull absolving the subjects of Philip from 
their allegiance, and declaring his forfeiture, when a very un- 
exj)ected circumstance interrupted all his projects. 

Philip gave too much the air of a personal quarrel with 
Boniface to what should have been a resolute opposition to 
the despotism of Rome. Accordingly, in an assembly of his 
states at Paris, he preferred virulent charges against the pope, 
denying him to have been legitimately elected, imputing to 
him various heresies, and ultimately appealing to a general 
council and a lawful head of the Church. These measures 
were not very happily planned; and experience had always 
shown that Europe would not submit to change the common 
chief of her religion for the purposes of a single sovereign. 
But Philip succeeded in an attempt apparently more bold and 
singular. Nogaret, a minister who had taken an active share 
in all the proceedings against Boniface, was secretly despatched 
into Italy, and, joining with some of the Colonna family, pro- 
scribed as Ghibelins, and rancorously persecuted by the pope, 
arrested him at Anagnia, a town in the neighborhood of Rome, 
to which he had gone without guards. This violent action 
was not, one would imagine, calculated to place the king in 
an advantageous light ; yet it led accidentally to a favorable 
termination of his dispute. Boniface was soon rescued by 
the inhabitants of Anagnia ; but rage brought on a fever 
which ended in his death ; and the first act of his successor, 
Benedict XL, was to reconcile the King of France to the 
Holy See. 

§ 13. The sensible decline of the papacy is to be dated from 
the pontificate of Boniface VIII. , who had strained its author- 
ity to a higher pitch than any of his predecessors. There is 
a spell wrought by uninterrupted good-fortune, which capti- 
vates men's understandings, and persuades them, against 
reasoning and analogy, that violent ])Ower is immortal and 
irresistible. The spell is broken by the first change of suc- 
cess. The tacit submission of the successors of Boniface 
VIII. to the King of France miglit have been hailed by 
Europe as a token that their influence was beginning to abate. 
Imprisoned, insulted, deprived eventually of life by the vio- 
lence of Philip, a prince excommunicated, and wlio had gone 
all lengths in defying and despising the papal jurisdiction, 
Boniface had every claim to be avenged by the inheritors of 
the same spiritual dominion. When Benedict XI. rescinded 



360 DECLINE OF THE PAPACY. Chap. VII. Pakt II. 

the bulls of Ills predecessor, and admitted Philip the Fair to 
communion, without insisting on any concessions, he acted 
perhaps prudently, but gave a fatal blow to the temporal 
authority of Home. 

Benedict XI. lived but a few months, and his successor, 
Clement V., at the instigation, as is commonly supposed, of 
the King of France, by whose influence he had been elected, 
took the extraordinary step of removing the papal chair to 
Avignon (a.d. loOo). In this city it remained for more than 
seventy years ; a period which Petrarch and other writers of 
Italy compare to that of the Babylonish captivity. The major- 
ity of the cardinals was always French, and the popes were 
uniformly of the same nation. Timidly dependent upon the 
Court of France, they neglected the interests and lost the 
affections of Italy. Rome, forsaken by her sovereign, nearly 
forgot her allegiance ; what remained of papal authority in 
the ecclesiastical territories was exercised by cardinal legates, 
little to the honor or advantage of the Holy See. Yet the 
series of Avignon pontiffs Avere far from insensible to Italian 
politics. These occupied, on the contrary, the greater part of 
their attention. But engaging in them from motives too mtmi- 
festly selfish, and being regarded as a sort of foreigners from 
birth and residence, they aggravated that unpopularity and 
bad reputation which from various other causes attached itself 
to their court. 

§ 14. Though none of the supreme pontiffs after Boniface 
VIII. ventured upon such explicit assumptions of a general 
jurisdiction over sovereigns by divine right as he had made in 
his controversy with Philip, they maintained one memorable 
struggle for temporal power against the Emperor Louis of 
Bavaria. His predecessor, Henry VII., Avhose measures, much 
to the alarm of the Court of Avignon, were directed towards 
the restoration of his imperial rights in Italy, had conferred 
tlie rank of vicar of the empire upon Matteo Visconti, lord of 
Milan. The popes had for some time pretended to possess 
that vicariate, during a vacancy of the empire ; and after 
Henry's death insisted upon Visconti's surrender of the title. 
A war ensued between the pope's legate and the Visconti 
family. The Emperor Louis sent assistance to the latter, as 
heads of the Ghibelin or imperial party. This interference 
cost him above twenty years of trouble. John XXIL, a man 
as passionate and ambitious as Boniface himself, immediately 
piiblished a bull in which he asserted the right of administer- 
ing the empire during its vacancy (even in Germany, as it 



EccLES. PowEK. PAPAL COUIIT AT AVIGNON, 3Gl 

seems from the generality of Lis expression), as well as of 
deciding in a donbtvful choice of the electors, to appertain to 
the Holy See ; and commanded Louis to lay down liis pre- 
tended authority until the supreme jurisdiction should deter- 
mine upon his election. Louis's election had, indeed, been 
questionable ; but that controversy was already settled in the 
held of Muhldorf, where he had obtained a victory over his 
competitor, the Duke of Austria ; nor had the pope ever inter- 
fered to appease a civil war during several years that Germany 
had been internally distracted by the dispute. The emperor, 
not yielding to this peremptory order, was excommunicated ; 
his vassals were absolved from their oath of fealty, and all 
treaties of alliance between him and foreign princes annulled 
(a.d. 1323). Germany, however, remained firm ; and if Louis 
himself had manifested more decision of mind and uniformity 
in his conduct, the Court of Avignon nn;st have signally failed 
in a contest from which it did not, in fact, come out very suc- 
cessful. But while at one time he went intemperate lengths 
against John XXIL, publishing scandalous accusations in an 
assembly of the citizens of Rome, and caused a Franciscan 
friar to be chosen in his room, after an irregular sentence of 
deposition, he was always anxious to negotiate terms of accom- 
modation, to give up his own active jjartisans, and to make 
concessions the most derogatory to his independence and 
dignity. From John, indeed, he had nothing to expect ; but 
Benedict XII. would gladly have been reconciled, if he had 
not feared the kings of France and Xaples, political adversa- 
ries of the emperor, who kept the Avignon pope's in a sort of 
servitude. His successor, Clement VI., inherited the implac- 
able animosity of John XXII. towards Louis, who died Avithout 
obtaining the absolution he had long abjectly solicited. 

§ 15. Though the want of firmness in this emperor's char- 
acter gave sometimes a momentary triumph to the popes, it 
is evident that their authority lost ground during the continu- 
ance of this struggle. Their right of confirming imperial elec- 
tions was expressly denied by a Diet held at Frankfort in 1338, 
which established as a fundamental jDrinciple that the im])erial 
dignity depended upon God alone, and that whoever should be 
chosen by a majority of the electors became immediately both 
king and emperor, with all prerogatives of that station, and 
did not require the ap})robation of the pope. This law, con- 
firmed as it was by subsequent usage, emancijiated the German 
Empire, which was immediately concerned in opposing the 
papal claims. But some who were actively engaged in these 



362 KAPACITY OF AVIGNON POPES. Chap. VII. Pabt II. 

transactions took more extensive views, and assailed tlie wlaole 
edifice of temporal poAver wliicli the Roman See had been con- 
structing for more than two centuries. Several men of learn- 
ing, among whom Dante, Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua are 
the most conspicuous, investigated the foundations of this 
superstructure, and exposed their insufficiency. Literature, 
too long the passive handmaid of spiritual despotism, began to 
assert her nobler birthright of ministering to liberty and truth. 
Though the writings of these opponents of Rome are not always 
reasoned upon very solid principles, they at least taught man- 
kind to scrutinize what had been received with implicit re- 
spect, and prepared the way for more philosophical discussions. 
About this time a new class of enemies had unexpectedly risen 
up against the rulers of the Church. These were a part of the 
Franciscan order who had seceded from the main body on ac- 
count of alleged deviations from the rigor of their primitive nile. 
Their schism was chiefly founded upon a quibble about the 
right of property in things consumable, which they maintained 
to be incompatible with ■^^.le absolute poverty prescribed to 
them. This frivolous sophistry was united with the wildest 
fanaticism; and as John XXII. attemi)ted to repress their 
follies by a cruel persecution, they proclaimed aloud the cor- 
ruption of the Church, fixed the name of Antichrist upon the 
papacy, and warmly supported the Emperor Louis throughout 
all his contention with the Holy See.^ 

Meanwhile, the popes who sat at Avigncn continued to in- 
vade with surprising rapaciousness the patronage and revenues 
of the Church. The mandats, or letters, directing a particular 
clerk to be preferred seem to have given place in a great degree 
to the more effectual method of appropriating benefices by 
reservation or provision, which was carried to an enormous 
extent in the fourteenth century. John XXII. , the most insa- 
tiate of pontiffs, reserved to himself all the bishoprics in 
Christendom. Benedict XII. assumed the privilege for his 
own life of disposing of all benefices vacant by cession, depri- 
vation, or translation. Clement VI. naturally thought that his 
title was ecpially good with his predecessors', and continued 
the same right for his own time ; which soon became a per- 
manent rule of the Roman Chancery. Hence the appointment 
of a prelate to a rich bishopric was generally but the first link 
in a chain of translation which the pope could regulate accord- 

* The schism of the rigid Franciscans or Fraticelli is one of the most singvihir parts 
of ecclesiastical history, and had a material tendency both to depress the temporal 
authority of the papacy and to pave the way for the Reformation. 



EccLES. Power. RArACITY OF AYIGNON TOPES. 363 

ing to liis interest. Another capital innovation was made by 
John XXII. in the establishment of the famous tax called An- 
nates, or tirst-fniits of ecclesiastical benefices, Avhicli he im- 
posed for his own benefit. These were one year's value, 
estimated according to a fixed rate in the books of the Roman 
Chancery, and payable to the papal collectors throughout 
Europe. Various other devices were invented to obtain money, 
which these degenerate popes, abandoning the magnificent 
schemes of their predecessors, were content to seek as their 
principal object. John XXII. is said to have accumulated an 
almost incredible treasure, exaggerated perhaps by the ill-will 
of his contemporaries ; but it may be doubted Avhether even his 
avarice reflected greater dislioiK)r on the Church than the licen- 
tious profuseness of Clement VI. 

These exactions were too much encouraged by the kings of 
France, who participated in the plunder, or at least required 
a mutual assistance of the popes for their own imposts on the 
clergy. A manlier spirit was displayed by our ancestors. It 
was the boast of England to have placed the first legal barrier 
to the usurpations of Rome, if we except the insulated Prag- 
matic .Sanction of St. Louis, from which the practice of suc- 
ceeding ages in France entirely deviated. The English barons 
had, in a letter addressed to Boniface VIII., absolutely dis- 
claimed his temporal supremacy over their crowii, which he 
had attempted to set up by intermeddling in the quarrel of 
Scotland. This letter, it is remarkable, is nearly coincident in 
point of time with that of the French nobility ; and the two 
combined may be considered as a joint protestation of both 
kingdoms, and a testimony to the general sentiment among 
the superior ranks of the laity. A very few years afterwards 
the Parliament of Carlisle wrote a strong remonstrance to 
Clement V. against the system of provisions and other extor- 
tions, including that of first-fruits, which it was rumored, they 
say, he Avas meditating to demand. But the Court of Avignon 
was not to be moved by remonstrances ; and the feeble admin- 
istration of Edward II. gave way to ecclesiastical usurpations 
at home as well as abroad. His magnanimous son took a 
bolder line. After complaining ineffectually to Clement VI. 
of the enormous abuse which reserved almost all English 
benefices to the pope, and generally for the benefit of aliens, 
he passed, in 1350, the famous Statute of Pro'visors. This act, 
reciting one supposed to have been made at the Parliament of 
Carlisle, which, however, does not appear, and comjilaining in 
strong language of the mischief sustained through continual 



364 KETURN OF POPES TO PvOME. Chap. VII. Pakt II. 

reservations of benefices, enacts that all elections and colla- 
tions shall be free, according to law, and that, in case any 
provision or reservation should be made by the Court of Rome, 
the king should for that turn have the collation of such a 
benefice, if it be of ecclesiastical election or patronage. This 
devolution to the crown, which seems a little arbitrary, was 
the only remedy that could be effectual against the connivance 
and timidity of chapters and spiritual jiatrons. We cannot 
assert that a statute so nobly planned was executed with equal 
steadiness. Sometimes by royal dispensation, sometimes by 
neglect or evasion, the papal bulls of provision were still 
obeyed, though fresh laws were enacted to the same effect as 
the former. It was found, on examination in 1307, that some 
clerks enjoyed more than twenty benefices by the pope's dis- 
pensation. And the Parliaments both of this and of Eichard 
II. 's reign invariably complain of tlie disregard shown- to the 
statute of provisors. This led to other measures, which I 
shall presently mention. 

§ 1(). The residence of the popes at Avignon gave very 
general offence to Europe, and they could not themselves 
avoid perceiving the disadvantage of absence from their 
proper diocese, the city of St. I'eter, the source of all their 
claims to sovereign authority. But Eome, so long aban- 
doned, offered but an inhosi)itable reception ; Urban V. re- 
turned to Avignon, after z short experiment of the capital ; 
and it was not till 1376 that the promise, often repeated, and 
long delayed, of restoring the papal chair to the metropolis 
of Christendom, Avas ultimately fidfilled by Gregory XI. 
His death, which ha])pened soon afterwaids, prevented, it is 
said, a second fiiglit that he wac preparing (a.d. 1378). Tliis 
was followed by the great schism, one of the most remark- 
able events in ecclesiastical history. It is a difficult and by 
no means an interesting cpiestion to determine the validity 
of that contested election wliich distracted the Latin Church 
for so many years. In one fact, however, tliere is a common 
agreement, that the cardinals, of whom the majority were 
French, having assembled in conclave for the election of a 
successor to Gregory XI., were disturbed by a tumultuous 
populace, who demanded, with menaces, a Roman, or at least 
an Italian, pope. This tumult a])]3ears to have been sufficiently 
violent to excuse, and in fact did produce, a considerable de- 
gree of intimidation. After some time the cardinals made 
choice of the Archbishop of Bari, a Neapolitan, who assumed 
the name of Urban VI. His election satisfied the populace, 



EccLES. Power. ORIGIN OF THE GREAT SCHISM. 365 

and traiKjuillity was restored. The cardinals announced their 
choice to the absent members of their coUege, and behaved 
towards Urban as their pope for several weeks. But his uncom- 
mon harshness of temper giving them offence, they withdrew to 
a neighboring town, and, protesting that his election had been 
compelled by the violence of the Koman populace, annulled 
the whole proceeding, and chose one of their own number, 
who took the pontilical name of Clement VII. Such are the 
leading circumstances which produced the famous schism. 
The two competitors shared the obedience of Europe in nearly 
equal proportions. Urban remained at Home, Clement re- 
sumed the station of Avignon. To the former adhered Italy, 
the empire, England, and the nations of the North ; the latter 
retained in his allegiance France, Spain, Scotland, and Sicily. 
Fortunately for the Church, no question of religious faith 
intermixed itself with this schism ; nor did any other impedi- 
ment to reunion exist than the obstinacy and selfishness of 
the contending parties. As is was impossible to come to any 
agreement on the original merits, there seemed to be no means 
of healing the wound but by the alxlication of both popes and 
a fresh undisputed election. This was the general wish of 
Europe, but urged with particular zeal by the Court of France, 
and, above all, by the university of Paris, which esteems this 
period the most honorable in her annals. The cardinals, liow- 
ever, of neither obedience would recede so far from their party 
as to suspend the election of a successor upon a vacancy of 
the pontificate, which would have at least removed one-half of 
the obstacle. The Eoman conclave, accordingly, placed three 
pontiffs successively — Boniface IX., Innocent VI., and Greg- 
ory XII. — in the seat of Urban VI. ; and the cardinals at 
Avignon, upon the death of Clement in 1394, elected Benedict 
XIII. (Peter de Luna), famous for his inflexible obstinacy in 
prolonging the schism. He repeatedly promised to sacrifice 
his dignity for the sake of union. But there was no subter- 
fuge to which this crafty pontiff had not recourse in order to 
avoid compliance with his word, though importuned, threat- 
ened, and even besieged in his palace at Avignon. Fatigued 
by his evasions, France withdrew her obedience, and the Gal- 
ilean Church continued for a few years without acknowledg- 
ing any supreme head. But this step, which was rather the 
measure of the University of Paris than of the nation, it 
seemed advisable to retract ; and Benedict was again obeyed, 
though France continued to urge his resignation. A second 
subtraction of obedience, or at least declaration of neutrality, 



3G6 COUNCILS OF PISA AND CONSTANCE. Ch. VII. Pt. II. 

was resolved upon, as preparatory to the convocation of a 
general council. On the otlier hand, those who sat at Rome 
displayed not less insincerity. Gregory XII. bound himself 
by oath, on his accession, to abdicate when it should appear 
necessary. But while these rivals were loading each other 
with the mutual reproach of scliism, they drew on themselves 
the suspicion of at least a virtual collusion in order to retain 
their respective stations. At length the cardinals of both 
parties, wearied with so much dissimulation, deserted their 
masters, and summoned a general council to meet at Pisa. 

§ 17. The council assembled at Pisa (1409), deposed both 
Gregory and Benedict, without deciding, in any respect, as to 
their pretensions, and elected Alexander V. by its own su- 
preme authority. This authority, however, was not univer- 
sally recognized ; the schism, instead of being healed, became 
more desperate ; for, as Spain adhered firmly to Benedict, and 
Gregory was not without supporters, there were now three 
contending pontiffs in the Church. A general council was 
still, however, the favorite, and indeed the sole remedy ; and 
John XXIII., successor to Alexander V., was reluctantly 
prevailed upon, or perhaps trepanned, into convoking one to 
meet at Constance (1414). In this celebrated assembly he 
was himself deposed — a sentence which he incurred by that 
tenacious clinging to his dignity, after repeated promises to 
abdicate, which had already proved fatal to his competitors. 
Tlie deposition of John, confessedly a legitimate pope, may 
strike us as an extraordinary measure. But, beside the op- 
portunity it might afford of restoring union, the council found 
a pretext for this sentence in his enormous vices, which indeed 
they seem to have taken upon common fame, without any judi- 
cial process. The true motive, however, of their proceedings 
against him was a desire to make a signal display of a new 
system, which had rapidly gained ground, and which I may 
venture to call the whig principles of the Catholic Church. 
A great question was at issue — whether the polity of that es- 
tablishment should be an absolute or an exceedingly limited 
monarchy. The papal tyranny, long endured, and still in- 
creasing, had excited an active spirit of reformation which the 
most distinguished ecclesiastics of France and other countries 
encouraged. They recurred, as far as their knowledge allowed, 
to a more primitive discipline than the canon law, and elevated 
the supremacy of general council. But in the formation of 
these they did not scruple to introduce material innovations. 
The bishops have usually been considered the sole members 



EccLES. Tower. COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 367 

of ecclesiastical assemblies. At Constance, however, sat and 
voted not only the chiefs of monasteries, but the ambassadors 
of all Christian princes, the deputies of universities, with a 
multitude of inferior theologians, and even doctors of law. 
These were naturally accessible to the pride of sudden eleva- 
tion, which enabled them to control the strong and humiliate 
the lofty. In addition to this, the adversaries of the Court of 
Rome carried another not less important innovation. The 
Italian bishops, almost universally in the papal interests, were 
so numerous that, if suffrages had been taken by the head, 
their preponderance would liave impeded any measure of trans- 
alpine nations towards reformation. It was determined, there- 
fore, that the council should divide itself into four nations, 
the Italian, the German, the French, and the English, each 
with equal rights ; and that, every proposition having been 
separately discussed, the majority of the four sliould prevail. 
This revolutionary spirit was very unacceptable to the cardi- 
nals, who submitted reluctantly, and with a determination that 
did not prove altogether unavailing, to save their papal monar- 
chy by a dexterous policy. They could not, however, prevent 
the famous resolutions of the fourth and fifth sessions, which 
declare that the council has received, by Divine right, an 
authority to which every rank, even the papal, is obliged to 
submit, in matters of faith, in the extirpation of the present 
schism, and in the reformation of the Church, both in its head 
and its members; and that every person, even a pope, who 
shall obstinately refuse to obey that council, or any other law- 
fully assembled, is liable to such punishment as shall be neces- 
sary. These decrees are the great pillars of that moderate 
theory, with respect to the papal authority, which distinguished 
the Grallican Church. 

The purpose for which these general councils had been re- 
quired, next to that of healing the schism, was the reformation 
of abuses. All the rapacious exactions, all the scandalous ve- 
nality of which Europe had complained, while unquestioned 
pontiffs ruled at Avignon, appeared light in comparison of the 
practices of both rivals during the schism. Tenths repeatedly 
levied upon the clergy, annates rigorously exacted, and enhanced 
by new valuations, fees annexed to the complicated formalities 
of tlie papal chancer}^, were the means by which each half of 
the Church was compelled to reimburse its chief for the sub- 
traction of the other's obedience. Boniface IX., one of the 
Roman line, whose fame is a little worse than that of his an- 
tagonists, made a gross traffic of his patronage — selling the 



S68 COUNCIL OF COKSTAXCE. Chap. VII. Part IT. 

privileges of exeni})tion from ordinary jurisdiction, of holding 
benefices in commendam, and other dispensations, invented 
for the benefit of the Holy See. Nothing had been attempted 
at Pisa towards reformation. At Constance the majority 
Avere ardent and sincere ; the representatives of the French, 
German, and English Churches met with a determined and, as 
we have seen, not always unsuccessful resolution to assert their 
ecclesiastical liberties. They appointed a committee of refor- 
mation, whose recommendations, if carried into effect, would 
have annihilated almost entirely that artfully constructed 
machinery by which Rome had absorbed so much of the rev- 
enues and patronage of the Church. But men interested in 
perpetuating these abuses, especially the cardinals, improved 
tlie advantages which a skilful government always enjoys in 
playing against a popular assembly. They availed themselves 
of the jealousies arising out of the division of the council into 
nations, which exterior political circumstances had enhanced. 
France, then at war with England, whose pretensions to be 
counted as a fourth nation she had warmly disputed, and not 
well-disposed towards the Emperor Sigismund, joined with 
the Italians against the English and German members of the 
council in a matter of the utmost importance — tlie immediate 
election of a pope before the articles of reformation should be 
finally concluded. These two nations, in return, united with 
the Italians to choose the Cardinal Colonna, against the advice 
of the French divines, who objected to any member of the 
sacred college. The Court of Rome were gainers in both ques- 
tions. Martin V., the new pope, soon evinced liis determina- 
tion to elude any substantial reform. After publishing a few 
constitutions, tending to redress some of the abuses that had 
arisen during the schism, he contrived to make separate con- 
ventions with the several nations, and as soon as possil)le dis- 
solved the council. 

§ 18. By one of the decrees passed at Constance, another 
general council was to be assembled in five years, a second at 
the end of seven more, and from that time a similar repre- 
sentation of the Church was to meet every ten years. Mar- 
tin V. accordingly convoked a council at Pavia, which, on 
account of the plague, was transferred to Siena ; but nothing 
of importance was transacted by this assembly. That which 
he summoned seven years afterwards to the city of P>asle had 
very different results (a.d. 14.33). The pope, dying before the 
meeting of this council, Avas succeeded by Eugenius IV., who, 
anticipating the spirit of its discussions, attempted to crush. 



EccLES. Power. COUNCIL OF BASLE. 369 

its independence in the outset, by transferring the place of 
session to an Italian city. Ko point was reckoned so mate- 
rial in the contest between the popes and reformers as whether 
a council should sit in Italy or beyond the Alps. The Council 
of Basle began, as it proceeded, in open enmity to the Court 
of Rome. Eugenius, after several years had elapsed in more 
or less hostile discussions, exerted his prerogative of remov- 
ing the assembly to Ferrara, and from thence to Florence. 
For this he had a specious pretext in the negotiation, then 
apparently tending to a prosperous issue, for the reunion of 
the Greek Church ; a triumph, however transitory, of which 
his council at Florence obtained the glory. On the other 
hand, the assembly at Basle, though much weakened by the 
defection of those who adhered to Eugenius, entered into com- 
pacts with the Bohemian insurgents more essential to the 
interests of the Church than any union with tlie Greeks, and 
completed the work begun at Constance by abolishing the 
annates, the reservations of benefices, and other abuses of papal 
authority. In this it received the approbation of most princes ; 
but when, provoked by the endeavors of the pope to frustrate 
its decrees, it ])roceeded so far as to suspend and even to 
depose him, neither France nor Germany concurred in the 
sentence. Even the Council of Constance had not absolutely 
asserted a right of deposing a lawful pope, except in case of 
heresy, though their conduct towards John could not other- 
wise be justified. This question, indeed, of ecclesiastical pub- 
lic law seems to l)e still undecided. The fathers of Basle 
acted, however, with greater intrepidity than discretion, and, 
not ])erhaps sensible of the change that was taking place in 
public opinion, raised Amadeus, a retired duke of Savoy, to 
the pontifical dignity by the name of Felix V. They thus re- 
newed the schism, and divided the ol)edience of the Catholic 
Church for a few years. The empire, however, as well as 
France, observed a singular and not very consistent neutrality ; 
respecting Eugenius as a lawful pope, and the assemljly at 
Basle as a general council. England warmly supported 
Eugenius, and even adhered to his council at Florence ; Ara- 
gon and some coiintries of smaller note acknowledged Felix. 
But the partisans of Basle became every year weakt'r ; and 
Nicolas v., the successor of Eugenius, found no great difficulty 
in obtaining the cession of Felix, and terminating this schism. 
This victory of the Court of Rome over the Council of Basle 
nearly counterbalanced the disadvantageous events at Con- 
stance, and put an end to tlie project of fixing permanent 



370 COUNCIL OF BASLE. Chap. VIL Pakt IL 

limitations upon the head of the Church by means of gener.J 
councils. Though the decree tliat prescribed the convocation 
of a council every ten years was still unrepealed, twice alone 
has the Catholic Church been convoked since the Council of 
Basle. 

It is a natural subject of speculation, what would have 
been ^ the effects of these universal councils, which were so 
po}>ular in the fifteenth century, if the decree passed at Con- 
stance for their periodical assembly had been regularly ob- 
served. Many Catholic writers, of the moderate or Cisalpine 
school, have lamented their disuse, and ascribed to it that 
irreparable breach which the Reformation has made in the 
fabric of their Church. But beyond the zeal, unquestionably 
sincere, which animated their members, especially at Basle, 
Jor the abolition of papal abuses, there is nothing to praise in 
their conduct, or to regret in their cessation. The statesman 
who dreaded the encroachments of priests upon the civil gov- 
'ernment, the Christian who panted to see his rites and faith 
purified from the corruption of ages, found no hope of improve- 
ment in these councils. They took upon themselves the pre- 
tensions of the popes whom they attempted to supersede. V>j 
a decree of the fathers at Constance, all persons, including 
princ^es, who should oppose any obstacle to a journey under- 
taken by the Emperor Sigismund, in order to obtain the 
cession of Benedict, are declared excommunicated, and de- 
prived of their dignities, whether secular or ecclesiastical. 
Their condemnation of Huss and Jerome of Prague, and the 
scandalous breach of faith which they induced Sigismund to 
commit on that occasion, are notorious. But perhaps it is not 
equally so that this celebrated assembly recognized by a 
solemn decree the flagitious ])rinciple which it had practised, 
declaring that Huss was unworthy, through his obstinate ad- 
herence to heresy, of any privilege ; nor ought any faith or 
promise to be kept with him, by natural, divine, or human 
law, to the prejudice of the Catholic religion.^ It will be 
easy to estimate the claims of this congress of theologians to 
our veneration, and to weigh the retrenchment of a few abuses 
against the formal sanction of an atrocious maxim. 

B This proposition is tlio great disgrace of tlie council in tlie affair of Huss. But 
the violation of his safe-conduct being a famous event in ecclesiastical hi>t<>ry, and 
whicli has h(>en very much disputed with some degree of erroneous statement on 
botli sides, it mav be proper to give briefly an impartial summary. 1. Huss came to 
Constance with a safe-conduct of the emperor very loosely worded, and not directed 
to any individuals. Lenfant, t. i., p. 50. 2. This pass, however, was binding upon 
the emperor himself, and was so considered by him, when he remonstrated against 
the arrest of Huss. Id., p. 73, 83. ."1 It was not binding on tlie council, who pos- 
sessed no temporal power, but had a right to decide upon the question of heresy. 



EccLES. PowKR. STAND AGAINST PAPAL DESPOTISM. 371 

§ 19. It Avas nut, however, necessary for any government of 
tolerable energy to seek the reform of those abuses which 
affected the independence of national churches, and the in- 
tegrity of their regular discipline, at the hands of a general 
council. Whatever difficulty there might be in overturning 
the principles founded on the decretals of Isidore, and sanc- 
tioned by the prescription of many centuries, the more flagrant 
encroachments of papal tyranny were fresh innovations, some 
within the actual generation, others easily to be traced up, 
and continually disputed. The principal European nations 
determined, with different degrees indeed of energy, to make 
a stand against the despotism of Eome. In this resistance 
England was not only the first engaged, but the most con- 
sistent ; her free parliament preventing, as far as the times 
permitted, that wavering p':^licy to which a court is liable. 
We have already seen that a foundation was laid in the statute 
of provisors uncler Edward III. In the next reign many other 
measures tending to repress the interference of Rome were 
adopted, especially the great statute of praemunire, which sub- 
jects all persons bringing papal bulls for translation of bishops, 
and other enumerated purposes, into the kingdom to the pen- 
alties of forfeiture and perpetual imprisonment. This act 
received, and probably was designed to receive, a larger inter- 
pretation than its language appears to warrant. Combined 
with the statute of provisors, it put a stop to the pope's usur- 
pation of patronage, which had impoverished the church and 
kingdom of England for nearly two centuries. Several at- 
tempts were made to overthrow these enactments ; the first 
Parliament of Henry IV. gave a very large power to the king 
over the statute of provisors, enabling him even to annul it at 
his pleasure. This, however, does not appear in the statute- 
book. Henry indeed, like his predecessors, exercised rather 
largely his prerogative of dispensing with the law against 
papal provisions ; a prerogative which, as to this point, was 
itself taken away by an act of his own, and another of his 
son, Henry V. But the statute always stood unrepealed ; and 

4. It is not manifest by what civil authority Huss was arrested, nor can I determine 
liow far the imperial safeguard was a legal protection within the city of Con- 
stance. 5. Sigismund was persuaded to acquiesce in the capital punisliment of 
Huss, and even to make it his own act (Lenfant,p. 409); by which he manifestly 
broke his engagement. 6. It is evident that in tliis he acted by the aiivice and sanc- 
tion of tlie council, who thus became accessory to the guilt of liis treacliery. 

The great moral to be drawn from the story of John Huss's condemnation is, that 
no breach of faith can be excused bv our opinion of ill-desert in tlie party, or by a 
narrow interpretation of our own engagements. Every capitulation ought to bo 
construed favorably for the weaker side. In such cases it is emphatically true that 
if the letter killethi the spirit should give life. 



372 EFFORTS TO RESTRAIN Chap. VII. Part II. 

it is a satisfactory proof of the ecclesiastical supremacy of 
the legislature that in the concordat made by Martin V., at the 
Council of Constance, with the English nation, we find no 
mention of reservation of benefices, of annates, and the other 
princi])al grievances of that age ; our ancestors disdaining to 
accept by compromise with the pope any modification, or even 
confirmation of their statute law. They had already restrained 
another flagrant abuse, the increase of first-fruits by Boniface 
IX. ; an act of Henry IV. forbidding any greater sum to be 
paid on that account than had been formerly accustomed. 

It will appear evident to every person acquainted with the 
contemporary historians, and the proceedings of Parliament, 
that, besides partaking in the general resentment of Europe 
against the papal court, England was under the influence of a 
peculiar hostility to the clergy, arising from the dissemination 
of the yu-inciples of Wiclitf. All ecclesiastical possessions 
were marked for spoliation by the system of this reformer ; 
and the House of Commons more than once endeavored to 
carry it into effect, pressing Henry IV. to seize the temporali- 
ties of the Church for public exigencies. This recommenda- 
tion, besides its injustice, was not likely to move Henry, whose 
policy had been to sustain the prelacy against tiieir new adver- 
saries. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction was kept in better control 
than formerly by tlie judges of common law, who through 
rather a strained construction of the statute of praemunire, 
extended its penalties to the spiritual courts when they trans- 
gressed their limits. The privilege of clergy in criminal cases 
still remained ; but it was acknowledged not to comprehend 
higli treason. 

Germany, as well as England, was disappointed of her 
hopes of general reformation by the Italian party at Con- 
stance ; Init she did not supply tlie wants of the council's de- 
crees with suflicient decision. The concordats of Aschaffen- 
burg, in 1448, siirrendered great part of the independence for 
which Germany had contended. The pope retained his 
annates, or at least a sort of tax in their place ; and instead of 
reserving benefices arbitrarily, he oV)tained the positive right 
of collation during six alternate months of every year. Epis- 
copal elections were freely restored to the chapters, except in 
case of translation, when the pope still continued to nominate ; 
as he did also if any person, canonically unfit, were presented 
to him for confirmation. Rome, for the remainder of the fif- 
teenth century, not satisfied with the terms she had imposed, 
is said to have continually encroached upon the right of 



EccLES. Power. PAPAL USURPATIONS. 373 

election. But she purchased too dearly her triumph over the 
weakness of Frederick III., and the Hundred Grievances of 
Germany, presented to Adrian VI. by the Diet of Xuremberg 
in 1522, manifested the working of a long-treasured resent- 
ment, that had made straight the path before the Saxon 
reformer. 

France, dissatisfied with the abortive termination of her 
exertions during the schism, rejected the concordat offered by 
Martin V., which held out but a promise of imperfect reforma- 
tion. She suffered in consequence the papal exactions for 
some years, till the decrees of the Council of Basle prompted 
her to more vigorous efforts for independence, and Charles VII. 
enacted the famous Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. Tliis has 
been deemed a sort of JMagna Charta of the Galilean Church ; 
for though the law was speedily abrogated, its principle has 
remained fixed as tlie basis of ecclesiastical liberties. By the 
Pragmatic Sanction a general council was declared superior to 
the pope ; elections of bishops were made free from all con- 
trol ; mandats or grants in expectancy, and reservations of 
benefices, were taken away ; first-fruits were abolished. This 
defalcation of wealth, which had now become dearer than 
power, could not be patiently borne at Rome. Pius II., the 
same ^neas Sylvius who had sold himself to oppose the Coun- 
cil of Basle, in whose service he had been originally distin- 
guished, used every endeavor to procure the repeal of this 
ordinance. With Charles VII. he had no success ; but Louis 
XI., partly out of blind hatred to his father's memory, partly 
from a delusive expectation that the pope would support the 
Angevin faction in Naples, repealed the Pragmatic Sanction. 
This may be added to other proofs that Louis XL, even ac- 
cording to the measures of worldly wisdom, was not a wise 
politician. His people judged from better feelings ; the Parlia- 
ment of Ir'aris constantly refused to enregister the revocation 
of that favorite law, and it continued in many respects to be 
acted upon until tlie reign of Francis I. At tlie States-General 
of Tours, in 14(S4, the inferior clergy, seconded by the two 
other orders, earnestly requested that the Pragmatic Sanction 
might be confirmed ; but the prelates were timid or corrupt, 
and the regent Anne was unwilling to risk a quarrel with the 
Holy See. This unsettled state continued, the Pragmatic 
Sanction neither quite enforced nor (j^uite repealed, till Francis 
I., having accommodated the differences of his predecessor 
with Rome, agreed upon a final concordat with Leo X., the 
treaty that subsisted for almost three centuries between the 



874 THE GALLTCAN" CHURCH. Chap. VIT. Part II. 

papacy and the kingdom of France. Instead of capitular elec- 
tion or papal provision, a new method was devised for tilling 
the vacancies of episcopal sees. The king was to nominate 
a fit person, whom the pope was to collate. The one obtained 
an essential patronage, the other preserved his theoretical su- 
premacy. Annates were restored to the pope ; a concession 
of great importance. He gave up his indefinite prerogative of 
reserving benefices, and received only a small stipulated patron- 
age. This convention met with strenuous opposition in France ; 
the Parliament of Paris yielded only to force ; the university 
hardly stopped short of sedition ; the zealous Galileans have 
ever since deplored it as a fatal wound to their liberties. There 
is much exaggeration in this, as far as the relation of the Gal- 
ilean Church to Rome is concerned ; but the royal nomination 
to bislioprics impaired of course the independence of the hier- 
archy. 

From the principles established during the schism, and in 
the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, arose the far-famed lib- 
erties of the Gallican Church, which honorably distinguished 
her from other members of the Roman communion. These 
liberties do not strictly fall within my limits; and it will be 
suthcient to observe tliat they depended upon two maxims ; 
one, that the pope does not possess any direct or indirect tem- 
poral authority ; the other, that his spiritual jurisdiction can 
only be exercised in conformity with such parts of the common 
law as are received by the kingdom of France. Hence the 
Gallican Church rejected a great part of the Sext and Clemen- 
tines, and paid little regard to modern papal bulls, which in 
fact obtained validity only by the king's approbation. 

The pontifical usurpations which were thus restrained af- 
fected, at least in their direct operation, rather the Cluirch 
than the State ; and temporal governments would only have 
been half emancipated, if their national hierarchies had pre- 
served their enormous jurisdiction. England, in this also, be- 
gan the work, and had made a considerable progress, while 
the mistaken piety or policy of Louis IX. and his successors 
had laid France open to vast encroachments. But the Parlia- 
ment of Paris, instituted in 1304, gradually establishod a para- 
mount authority over ecclesiastical as well as civil tribunals. 
Their progress was indeed very slow, and it was not till the 
beginning of the sixteenth century that they devised their 
famous form of procedure, the "appeal because of abuse." 
This, in the course of time, and through the decline of eccle- 
siastical power, not only proved an effectual barrier against 



EccLES. PowEU. DECLINE OF PAPAL INFLUENCE. 375 

encroachments of spiritual jurisdiction, but drew back again to 
the lay court the greater part of those causes which by pre- 
scription, and indeed by law, had appertained to a different 
cognizance. Thus test?anentary, and even, in a great degree, 
matrimonial causes were decided by the Parliament; and in 
many other matters that body, being the judge of its own com- 
petence, narrowed, by means of the appeal because of abuse, 
the boundaries of the opposite jurisdiction. This remedial 
process appears to have been more extensively applied than 
our English writ of prohibition. The latter merely restrains 
the interference of the ecclesiastical courts in matters which the 
law has not committed to them. But the Parliament of Paris 
considered itself as conservator of the liberties and discipline 
of the Gallican Church ; and interposed the appeal because of 
abuse, whenever the spiritual court, even in its proper prov- 
ince, transgressed the canonical rules by which it ought to be 
governed. 

§ 20. While the bisho})s of Rome were losing their general 
influence over Europe, they did not gain more estimation in 
Italy. It is indeed a problem of some difficulty, whether they 
derived any substantial advantage from their temporal princi- 
pality. From the termination of the schism, as the popes 
found their ambition tliAvarted beyond the Alps, it was diverted 
more and more towards schemes of the temporal sovereignty. 
In these we do not perceive that consistent policy which re- 
markably actuated their conduct as supreme heads of the 
Church. Men generally advanced in years, and born of noble 
Italian families, made the papacy subservient to the elevation 
of their kindred, or to the interests of a local faction. For 
such ends they mingled in the dark conspiracies of that bad 
age, distinguished only by the more scandalous tur})itude of 
their vices from the petty tyrants and intriguers with whom 
they were engaged. In the latter part of the fifteenth century, 
when all favorable prejudices were worn away, those who oc- 
cupied the most conspicuous station in Europe disgraced their 
name by more notorious profligacy than could be paralleled in 
the darkest age that had preceded ; and at the moment beyond 
which this work is not carried — the invasion of Italy by 
Charles VIII. — I must leave the pontifical throne in the pos- 
session of Alexander VI. 



376 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. Vill. Taut 1. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. 
PART I. 

§ 1. Sketch of Anglo-Saxon History. § 2. Succession to the Crown. § 3. Influence 
of Provincial Governors. § 4. Orders of Men. Thanes and Ceorls. § 5. British 
Natives and Slaves. § 0. "VVitenageniot. § 7. Judicial System. Division into 
Hundreds. County Court. § 8. Trial by Jury. Its Antiquity investigated. 
§ 9. Law of Frank-pledge. Its several Stages. §10 Question of Feudal Tenures 
before the Conquest. 

§ 1. The seven very unequal kindonis of the Saxon Heptar- 
chy, formed successively out of the countries wrested from the 
Britons, were originally independent of each other. Several 
times, however, a powerful sovereign acquired a preponderating 
influence over his neighbors, marked perhaps by the payment 
of tribute. Seven are enumerated by Bede as having thus 
reigned over the whole of Britain ; an expression which must be 
very loosely interpreted.^ Three kingdoms became at length pre- 
dominant — those of Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland. 
The first rendered tributary the small estates of the South- 
east, and the second that of tlie Eastern Angles. But Egbert, 
king of Wessex, not only incorporated with his own monarchy 
the dependent kingdoms of Kent and Essex, but obtained an 
acknowledgment of his su])eriority from Mercia and Northum- 
berland ; the latter of which, though the most extensive of any 
Anglo-Saxon state, was too much weakened by its internal di- 
visions to offer any resistance. Still, however, the kingdoms of 
Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumberland remained under 
their ancient line of sovereigns ; nor did either Egbert or his 
five immediate successors assume the title of any other crown 
than Wessex. 

The destruction of those minor states was reserved for a dif- 
ferent enemy. About the end of the eighth century the 
Northern pirates began to ravage the coast of England. Scan- 
dinavia exhibited in that age a very singular condition of 
society. Her population, continually redundant in those bar- 
ren regions which gave it birth, was cast out in search of 
plunder upon the ocean. Those who loved riot rather than 

1 See NoTii I., " The Bretwaldas." 



ENG1.1SH Const. DANISH INVASIONS. 377 

famine embarked in large armaments under chiefs of legitimate 
authority as well as approved valor. Such were the Sea-kings, 
renowned in the stories of the North — the younger branches, 
commonly, of royal families, who inherited, as it were, the sea 
for their patrimony. Without any territory but on the bosom 
of the waves, without any dwelling but their ships, these 
princely pirates were obeyed by numerous subjects, and inti- 
midated ]nighty nations. Their invasions of England became 
continually more formidable ; and, as their confidence in- 
creased, they began first to winter, and ultimately to form per- 
manent settlements in the country. By their command of tlie 
sea, it was easy for them to harass every part of an island 
presenting such an extent of coast as Britain ; the Saxons, 
after a brave resistance, gradually gave way, and were on the 
brink of the same servitude or extermination which their 
own arms had already brought upon the ancient possessors. 

From this imminent peril, after the three dependent king- 
doms, Mercia, Northumberland, and East Anglia, had been 
overwhelmed, it was the glory of Alfred to rescue the Anglo- 
Saxon monarchy. Nothing less than the appearance of a hero 
so undespondiug, so enterprising, and so jtist, could have pre- 
vented the entire conquest of England. Yet he never sub- 
dued the Danes, nor became master of the whole kingdom. 
The Thames, the Lea, the Ouse, and the Roman road called 
Watling Street, determined the limits of Alfred's dominion. 
To the north-east of this boundary were spread the invaders, 
still denominated the armies of East Anglia and Northumber- 
land; a name terribly expressive of foreign conquerors, who 
retained their warlike confederacy, without melting into the 
mass of their subject population. Three able and active sov- 
ereigns, Edward, Athelstan, and Edmund, the successors of 
Alfred, pursued the course of victory, and not only rendered 
the English monarchy co-extensive with the present limits of 
England, but asserted at least a supremacy over the bordering 
nations.^ Yet even Edgar, the most powerful of the Anglo- 
Saxon kings, did not venture to interfere with the legal cus- 
toms of his Danish subjects.^ 

Under this prince, whose rare fortune as Avell as judicious 
conduct procured him tlie surname of Peaceable, the kingdom 
appears to have reached its zenith of prosperity. But his 
premature death changed the scene. The minority and feeble 

2 See Note II., " Saxon Kiiifj.s of all Kiifrland." 

3 It seems now to be ascertained, by the comparison of dialects, that the inhabit- 
ants from the Humber, or at least the Tyue, to the Firth of Forth, were chiefly Danes. 



378 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Part I. 

character of Ethelred II. provoked fresh incursions of onr 
enemies beyond the German Sea. A long series of disasters, 
and the inexplicable treason of those to whom the public safety 
was intrusted, overthrew the Saxon line, and established 
Canute of Denmark upon the throne. 

The character of the Scandinavian nations was in some 
measure changed from what it had been during their first in- 
vasions. They had embraced the Christian faith ; they were 
consolidated into great kingdoms ; they had lost some of that 
predatory and ferocious spirit which a religion invented, as it 
seemed, for pirates had stimulated. Those, too, wlio had long 
been . settled in England became gradually more assimilated to 
the natives, whose laws and language were not radically dif- 
ferent from their own. Hence the accession of a Danish line 
of kings produced neither any evil nor any sensible change of 
polity. But the English still outnumbered their conquerors, 
and eagerly returned, when an opportunity arrived, to the 
ancient stock. Edward the Confessor, notwithstanding his 
Norman favorites, was endeared by the mildness of Ids charac- 
ter to the English nation, and subsequent miseries gave a kind 
of postliumous credit to a reign not eminent either for good- 
fortune or wise government. 

§ 2. In a stage of civilization so little advanced as that of 
the Anglo-Saxons, and under circumstances of such incessant 
peril, the fortunes of a nation chiefly depend upon the wisdom 
and valor of its sovereigns. No free people, therefore, would 
intrust their safety to blind chance, and permit an uniform 
observance of hereditary succession to prevail against strong 
public expediency. Accordingly, the Saxons, like most other 
European nations, while they limited the inheritance of the 
crown exclusively to one royal family, were not very scrupulous 
about its devohition upon the nearest heir. It is an unwar- 
ranted assertion of Carte, that the rule of the Anglo-Saxon 
monarchy was "lineal agnatic succession, the blood of the 
second son having no right until the extinction of that of the 
eldest." * Unquestionably the eldest son of the last king, being 
of full age, and not manifestly incompetent, was his natural 
and probable successor ; nor is it, perhaps, certain that he 
always waited for an election to take upon himself tlie rights 
of sovereignty, although the ceremony of coronation, according 
to tlie ancient form, appears to imply its necessity. But the 
public security in those times was tliought incompatible with 

* Vol. i., p. .365. Blackstone has labored to prove the same proposition : but his 
knowledge of English history was rather superticial. 



English Const. SUCCESSION TO CKOWN. 379 

a minor king ; and tlie artificial substitution of a regency, 
which stricter notions of hereditary right have introduced, had 
never occurred to so rude a people. Thus, not to mention 
those instances which the obscure times of the Heptarchy ex- 
hibit, Ethelred I., as some say, but certainly Alfred, excluded 
the progeny of their elder brother from the throne. Alfred, 
in his testament, dilates upon his own title, which he builds 
upon a triple foundation, the will of his father, the compact 
of his brother Ethelred, and the consent of the West-Saxon 
nobility. A similar objection to the government of an infant 
seems to have rendered Athelstan, notwithstanding his reputed 
illegitimacy, the public choice upon the deatJQ of Edward the 
Elder. Thus, too, the sons of Edmund I. were postponed to 
their Uncle Eldred, and again, preferred to his issue. And 
happy might it have been for England if this exclusion of 
infants had always obtained. But upon the death of Edgar, 
the royal family wanted some prince of mature years to pre- 
vent the crown from resting upon the head of a child; and 
hence the minorities of Edward II. and Ethelred II. led to 
misfortunes which overwhelmed for a time both the house of 
Cedric and the English nation. 

§ 3. The Anglo-Saxon monarchy, during its earlier period, 
seems to have suffered but little from that insubordination 
among the superior nobility Avhich ended in dismembering the 
empire of Charlemagne. Such kings as Alfred and Athelstan 
were not likely to permit it. And the English counties, each 
under its own alderman, were not of a size to encourage the 
usurpation of their governors. But when the whole kingdom 
was subdued, there arose, unfortunately, a fashion of intrust- 
ing great provinces to the administration of a single earl. 
Notwithstanding their union, Mercia, Northumberland, and 
East Anglia were regarded in some degree as distinct parts of 
the monarchy. A difference of laws, though pr(*bably but 
slight, kept up this separation. Alfred governed Mercia by 
the hands of a nobleman who had married his daughter Etliel- 
fleda ; and that lady after her husband's death held the reins 
with a masculine energy till her own, when her brother 
Edward took the province into his immediate command. But 
from the era of Edward II. 's succession the provincial govern- 
ors began to overpower the royal authority, as they had done 
upon the Continent. England under this prince was not far 
removed from the condition of France under Charles the Bald. 
In the time of Edward the Confessor the wholf^ kingdom seems 
to have been divided among five earls ; ^ three of whom were 

6 See p. 393. 



380 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. YIIl. Pakt I. 

Godwin and liis sons Harold and Tostig. It cannot be won- 
dered at that the royal line was soon supplanted by the most 
powerful and popular of these leaders, a prince well worthy to 
have founded a new dynasty, if his eminent qualities had not 
yielded to those of a still more illustrious enemy. 

§ 4. The proper division of freemen was into Eorls and 
Ceoels, a division corresponding to the phrase '^ gentle and 
simple " of later times. The eorl was a gentleman, the ceorl 
a yeoman, but both freemen. The eorl did not become a title 
of office till the eleventh century, when it was used as synony- 
mous to alderman for the governor of a county or province. 
After the word became used in this restricted sense, the class 
of persons which it originally designated was called Thanes, 
and accordingly we have the twofold division of freemen into 
Thanes and Ceorls. 

Among all the Northern nations, as is well known, the were- 
gild, or compensation for murder, was the standard measure 
of the gradations of society. In the Anglo-Saxon laws we 
find two ranks of freeholders ; the first, called King's Thanes, 
whose lives were valued at 1200 shillings ; the second, of in- 
ferior degree, whose composition was half that siim. Tliat of 
a ceorl was 200 shillings. If this proportion to the value of a 
thane points out the subordination of rank, it certainly does 
not exhibit the lower freemen in a state of complete abase- 
ment. The ceorl was not bound, at least universally, to the 
land which he cultivated. He was occasionally called upon to 
bear arms for the public safety; he was protected against 
personal injuries, or trespasses on his land ; he was capable of 
property, and of the privileges which it conferred. If he 
came to possess five hydes of land (or about 600 acres), with a 
church and mansion of his own, he was entitled to tlie name 
and riglits of a thane. And if by owning five hydes of land he 
became a thane, it is plain that he might possess a less quan- 
tity without reaching that rank. There were, therefcu-e, ceorls 
with land of their own, and ceorls without land of their own ; 
ceorls who might commend themselves to what lord they 
pleased, and ceorls who could not qiut the hmd on which they 
lived, owing various services to the lord of the manor, but 
always freemen, and capable of becoming gentlemen. 

Nobody can doubt that the vilhmi and hordarii of Dooms- 
day-book, who are always distinguished from the serfs of the 
demesne, were the ceorls of Anglo-Saxon law. And I presume 
that the socmen, who so frequently occur in that record, 
though far more in some counties than in others, were ceorls 



English Const. OEDEKS OF MEN. 381 

more fortunate than tlie rest, who, by purchase, had acquired 
freeholds, or, by prescription and the indulgence of their 
lords, had obtained such a property in the outlands allotted to 
them that they could not be removed, and in many instances 
might dispose -of them at pleasure. They are the root of a 
noble plant, the free socage tenants, or English yeomanry, 
whose independence has stamped with peculiar features both 
our constitution and our national character.^ 

§ 5. Beneath the ceorls in political estimation were the con- 
quered natives or Britons. In a war so long and so obstinately 
maintained as that of tlie Britons against their invaders, it is 
natural to conclude that in a great part of the country the 
original inhabitants were almost extirpated, and that the re- 
mainder were reduced into servitude. This, till lately, has 
been the concurrent opinion of our antiquaries ; and, with 
some qualification, I do not see why it should not still be 
received. In every kingdom of the Continent which was 
formed by the Nortliern nations out of the Roman Empire, the 
Latin language preserved its superiority, and has much more 
been corrupted through ignorance and want of a standard than 
intermingled with their original idiom. But our own language 
is, and has been from the earliest times after the Saxon con- 
quest, essentially Teutonic, and of the most obvious affinity 
to those Low-German dialects which are spoken along the coast 
from Flanders to Holstein. With such as are extravagant 
enough to controvert so evident a truth it is idle to contend ; 
and those who believe great part of our language to be bor- 
rowed from the Welsh may doubtless infer that great part of 
our population is derived from the same source. If we look 
through the subsisting Anglo-Saxon records, there is not very 
frequent mention of British subjects. But some undoubtedly 
there were in a state of freedom, and possessed of landed 
estate. A Welshman (that is, a Briton) who held five hydes 
was raised, like a ceorl, to the dignity of thane. In the com- 
position, however, for their lives, and consequently in their 
rank in society, they were inferior to the meanest Saxon free- 
man. The slaves, who were frequently the objects of legis- 
lation, rather for the purpose of ascertaining their punishments 
than of securing their rights, may be presumed, at least in 
early times, to have been part of the conquered Britons. For 
though his own crimes, or the tyranny of others, might pos- 
sibly reduce a Saxon ceorl to this condition, it is inconceivable 
that the lowest of those avIio won England with their swords 

6 For furtlicr information upon these points, see Note III., " Eorl and Ceorl." 



382 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. YIII. Pakt I. 

should, in the establishment of the new kingdoms, have been 
left destitute of personal liberty. 

§ 6. The great council by which an Anglo-Saxon king was 
guided in all the main acts of government bore the appella- 
tion of AViTENAOEMOT, or the Assemhlij of the Wise Men. All 
their laws express the assent of this council ; and there are 
instances where grants made without its concurrence have 
been revoked. It was composed of prelates and abbots, of 
the aldermen of shires, and, as it is generally expressed, of the 
noble and wise men of the kingdom. Whether the lesser 
thanes, or inferior proprietors of lands, were entitled to a 
place in the national council, as they certainly were in the 
Shirgemot, or County Court, is not easily to be decided. If, 
however, all the body of thanes or freeliolders were admissible 
to the Witenagemot, it is unlikely that the privilege should 
have been fully exercised. Very few, I believe, at present 
imagine that there was any representative system in that age ; 
much less that tlie ceorls or inferior freemen had the smallest 
share in the deliberations of the national assembly. Every 
argument which a spirit of controversy once pressed into this 
service has long since been victoriously refuted.'^ 

§ 7. It has been justly remarked by Hume that, among a 
people who lived in so simple a manner as these Anglo-Saxons, 
the judicial power is always of more consequence than the 
legislative. The liberties of these Anglo-Saxon thanes were 
chiefly secured, next to their swords and their free spirits, by 
the inestimable right of deciding civil and criminal suits in 
their own County Court ; an institution which, having sur- 
vived the Conquest, and contributed in no small degree to fix 
the liberties of England upon a broad and pojDular basis, by 
limiting the feudal aristocracy, deserves attention in following 
the history of the British constitution. 

The division of the kingdom into counties, and of these into 
hundreds and decennaries, for the pur])ose of administering 
justice, was not peculiar to England. In the early laws of 
France and Lombardy, frequent mention is made of the Hun- 
dred-court, and, now and then, of those petty village magis- 
trates Avho in England were called tithing-men. It has been 
usual to ascribe the establishment of this system among our 
Saxon ancestors to Alfred, upon the authority of Ingulfus, a 
writer contemporary with the Conquest, but the work Avhich 
bears his name is now usually considered a forgery. Neither 
the biographer of Alfred, Asserius, nor the existing laws of that 

7 Note IV., " The Witenagemot." 



English Const. JUDICIAL SYSTEM. 383 

prince, attribute the system to Alfred. With respect, indeed, 
to tlie division of counties, and their government by aldermen 
and sheriffs, it is certain that both existed long before his 
time ; and the utmost that can be supposed is, that he might 
in some instances have ascertained an unsettled boundary. 
There does not seem to be equal evidence as to the antiquity 
of the minor divisions. Hundreds, I think, are hrst mentioned 
in a law of Edgar, and tithings in one of Canute. But as 
Alfred, it must be remembered, was never master of more 
than half the kingdom, the complete distribution of England 
into these districts cannot, upon any supposition, be referred 
to him. 

There is, indeed, a circumstance observable in this division 
which seems to indicate that it could not have taken place at 
one time, nor upon one system ; I mean the extreme inequal- 
ity of hundreds in different parts of England. Whether the 
name be conceived to refer to the number of free families, or 
of land-holders, or of petty '. Ills, forming so many associations 
of mutual assurance or frank-pledge, one can hardly doubt that, 
when the term was first applied, a hundred of one or other of 
these were comprised, at an average reckoning, within the dis- 
trict. But it is impossible to reconcile the varying size of 
hundreds to any single hypothesis. The county of Sussex 
contains sixty-five, that of Dorset forty-three ; while Yorkshire 
has only twenty-six, and Lancashire but six. No difference of 
population, though the south of England was u.ndoubtedly far 
the best peopled, can be conceived to account for so prodigious 
a disparity. I know of no better solution than that the divis- 
ions of the North, properly called Avapentakes, were planned 
upon a different system, and obtained the denomination of 
hundreds incorrectly after the union of all England under a 
single sovereign. 

Assuming, therefore, the name and partition of hundreds to 
have originated in the southern counties, it will rather, I 
think, appear probable that they contained only a hundred free 
families, including the ceorls as well as their landlords. If we 
suppose none but the latter to have been numbered, we should 
find GOOO thanes in Kent, and G500 in Sussex — a reckoning 
totally inconsistent with any probable estimate. But though 
we have little direct testimony as to the population of tliose 
times, there is one passage which falls in very sufficiently with 
the former supposition. Bede says that the kingdom of the 
South Saxons, comprehending Surrey as well as Sussex, con- 
tained 7000 families. The county of Sussex alone is divided 



384 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Part I. 

into sixty-five liundreds, which comes at least close enough to 
prove that free families, rather than proprietors, were the sub- 
ject of that numeration. 

The Court of the Hundred was held, as on the Continent, 
by its own eentenarius, or hundred-man, more often called 
alderman, and, in the Norman times, bailiff or constable, but 
under the sheriff's writ. It is, in the language of the law, the 
sheriff's tourn and leet. And in the Anglo-Saxon age it was 
a court of justice for suitors within the hundred, though it 
could not execute its process beyond that limit. It also pun- 
ished small offences, and was intrusted with the "view of 
frank-pledge," and the maintenance of the great police of mu- 
tual surety. In some cases — that is, when the handred was 
competent to render judgment — it seems that the County 
Court could only exercise an appellate jurisdiction for denial 
of right in the lower tribunal. But, in course of time, the for- 
mer and more celebrated court became the real arbiter of im- 
portant suits ; and the court-leet fell almost entirely into 
disuse as a civil jurisdiction, contenting itself with punishing 
petty offences and keeping up a local police.^ It was to the 
County Court that an English freeman chiefly looked for the 
maintenance of his civil rights. In this assembly, held twice 
in the year by the bishop and the alderman,^ or, in his absence, 
the sheriff, the oath of allegiance was administered to all free- 
men, breaches of the peace were inquired into, crimes were 
investigated, and claims were determined. In this court alone, 
the thanes, to the exclusion of inferior freemen, were the 
judges of civil controversies. The latter, indeed, were called 
upon to attend its meetings, or, in the language of our present 
law, were suitors to the court, and it was penal to be absent. 
But this was on account of other duties, the oath of allegiance 
which they were to take, or the frank-pledges into which they 
were to enter, not in order to exercise any judicial power ; un- 
less we conceive that the disputes of the eeorls were decided 
by judges of their own rank. Ko appeal could be made to the 
royal tribunal, unless justice was denied in the County Court. 

8 Sir F. Palfrrave, in the "Edinburp:b Roviow"for 1822 (xxxvi , 287), deduces the 
liuiulred from the hcerdd of the Soiiiidiiiiiviau kingdoms, tlie integral unit of the 
Sciindinavian commonwealths. He points out tliat the hundr('(l was as mucli tlie or- 
ganic germ of tlie Anglo-Saxon commonweidth as the ha'rad was of the Scandinavian. 
Thus, the leet, held every month, and composed of the tithinj,' -men or head-boroughs, 
representing the inhahifants, were both the inquest and tlie jury, possessing juris- 
di(!tion, as he con<'eives, in all cases, civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical, though 
this was restrained after the Conquest. 

9 The alderman was the highest rank after the royal family, to which he some- 
times belonged. Every county had its alderman; but the njiine is not aiiplied in 
written documents to magistrates of boroughs before the Conquest. 



Engtjsh Const. TRIAL BY JURY. 3S5 

There were, however, royal judges, who, either by Avay of ap- 
peal from the lower courts, or in excepted cases, formed a 
paramount judicature ; but how their court was composed un- 
der the Anglo-Saxon sovereigns, I do not pretend to assert. 

§ 8. It had been a prevailing opinion that trial by jury may 
be referred to the Anglo-Saxon age, and common tradition has 
ascribed it to the wisdom of Alfred ; but this opinion is now 
universally abandoned. The only passage in the laws of Al- 
fred bearing upon this ])oint is as follows : " If any one accuse 
a king's thane of homicide, if he dare to purge himself, let him 
do it along with twelve king's thanes." " If any one accuse a 
thane of less rank than a king's thane, let him purge himself 
along with eleven of his equals, and one king's thane." This 
law, which some contend to mean nothing but trial by jury, 
really refers to that ancient usage of compurgation, where the 
accused sustained his own oath by those of a number of his 
friends, who pledged their knowledge, or at least their belief, 
of his innocence. Other passages in the Saxon laws which 
have been cited in favor of the antiquity of trial by jury 
equally refer to compurgators. Their numbers were some- 
times twelve, at other times twenty-four, and occasionally 
thirty-six. 

The principle of the whole law of compurgation is to be 
found in that stress laid upon general character which per- 
vades the Anglo-Saxon jurisi)rudence. The law of frank-})ledge 
proceeded upon the maxim that the best guaranty of every 
man's obedience to the government was to be sought in tlie 
confidence of his neighbors. 

The seeds of our present form of trial by jury may be dis- 
covered in a law of Ethelred II., by which a court was to be 
held in every wapentake, where the sheriff and twelve princi- 
pal thanes should swear that they would neither acquit any 
criminal nor convict any innocent person. It seems more prob- 
able that these thanes were permanent assessors to the sheriff, 
lice the scabini, so frequently mentioned in the early laws of 
France and Italy, than jurors indiscriminately selected. Their 
duties were to present offenders, and they bear analogy to our 
grand juries. They must be clearly distinguished from the 
compurgators already mentioned. 

The nearest approach to a regular jury wliich has been pre- 
served in our scanty memorials of the Anglo-Saxon age occurs 
in the- history of the monastery of Ramsey. A controversy 
relating to lands between that society and a certain nobleman 
was brouglit into the Coimty Court, when each party was heard 



386 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Part I. 

in his own behalf. After this commencement, on account, 
probably, of the length and difficulty of the investigation, it 
was referred by the court to thirty-six thanes, equally chosen 
by both sides. And here we begin to perceive the manner in 
which those tumultuous assemblies — the mixed body of free- 
holders in their County Court — slid gradually into a more 
steady and more diligent tribunal. But this was not the work 
of a single age. In the Conc^ueror's reign we hnd a proceeding 
very similar to the case of Ramsey, in which the suit had been 
commenced in the County Court before it was found expedient 
to remit it to a select body of freeholders. In the reign of 
William Rufus, and down to that of Henry II., when the trial 
of writs of right by the Grand Assize was introduced, there are 
other instances of the original usage. 

It is impossible not to be struck with the preference given 
to twelve, or some multiple of it, in fixing the number either 
of judges or compurgators. This was not peculiar to England 
— there are several instances of it in the early German laws ; 
and that number seems to have been regarded with equal ven- 
eration in Scandinavia. It is very immaterial from what ca- 
price of superstition this predilection arose, but its general 
prevalence shows that, in searching for the origin of trial by 
jury, we cannot rely for a moment upon any analogy which 
the mere number affords. I am induced to make this observa- 
tion, because some of the passages wliich have been alleged by 
eminent men for the purpose of establishing the existence of 
that institution before the Conquest seem to have little else to 
support them.^'* 

§ 9. There is certainly no part of the Anglo-Saxon polity 
which has attracted so much the notice of modern times as the 
law of frank-pledge, or mutual responsibility of the members 
of a tithing for each other's abiding the course of justice. This, 
like the distribution of hundreds :md tithings themselves, and 
like trial by jury, has been generally attributed to Alfred ; and 
of this, I suspect, we must also deprive him. 

The peculiar system of frank-pledges seems to have passed 
through the following very gradual stages : At first, an accused 
person was obliged to find bail for standing his trial. At a 
subsequent period, his relations were called upon to become 
sureties for payment of the composition and other fines to 
which he was "liable. They were even subject to be impris- 
oned until payment was made, and this imprisonment was com- 
mutable for a certain sum of money. The next stage was, to 

i» Note V., " Trial by Jury." 



English Const. FKANK-PLEDGE. 387 

make persons already convicted, or of suspicious repute, give 
sureties for their future behavior. It is not till the reign of 
Edgar that we find the first general law, wliich places every 
man in the condition of the guilty or suspected, and compels 
him to find a surety, who shall be responsible for his appear- 
ance when judicially summoned. This is perpetually repeated 
and enforced in later statutes, during his reign and that of 
Ethelred. Finally, the laws of Canute declare the necessity of 
belonging to some hundred and tithing, as well as of providing 
sureties ; and it may, perhaps, be inferred that the custom of 
rendering every member of a tithing answerable for the ap- 
pearance of all the rest, as it existed after the Conquest, is as 
old as the reign of this Danish monarch. 

It is an error to suppose, as some have stated, that " the 
members of every tithing were resj^onsible for the conduct 
of one another ; and that the society, or their leader, might be 
prosecuted and compelled to make reparation for an injury 
committed by any individual." In fact, the members of a 
tithing were no more than perpetual bail for each other. 
'' The greatest security of the public order (say the laws as- 
cribed to the Confessor) is that every man must bind himself 
to one of those societies which the English in general call 
freeborgs, and the people of Yorkshire ten men's tale." This 
consisted in the responsibility of ten men, each for the other, 
throughout every village in the kingdom ; so that, if one of 
the ten committed any fault, the nine should produce him in 
justice ; where he should make reparation by his own property 
or by personal punishment. If he fled from justice a mode 
was provided according to which the tithing might clear them- 
selves from participation in his crime or escape ; in default of 
such exculpation, and the malefactor's estate proving deficient, 
they were compelled to make good the penalty. And it is 
equally manifest, from every other passage in which mention 
is made of this ancient institution, that the obligation of the 
tithing was merely that of permanent bail, responsible only 
indirectly for the good behavior of their members. 

Every freeman above the age of twelve years was required 
to be enrolled in some tithing. In order to enforce this essen- 
tial part of police, the courts of the tourn and leet were erected, 
or rather, perhaps, separated from that of the county. The 
periodical meetings of these, whose duty it was to inquire into 
the state of tithings, whence they were called the view of 
frank-pledge, are regulated in Magna Charta. But this cus- 
tom, which seems to have been in full vigor when Bracton 



388 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Part I. 

wrote, and is enforced by a statute of Edward II., gradually 
died away in succeeding times. 

§ 10. It remains only, before we conclude tliis sketch of the 
Anglo-Saxon system, to consider the once famous question 
respecting the establishment of feudal tenures in England 
before the Conquest. 

The distribution of landed property m England by the Anglo- 
Saxons is clearly explained by Mr. Allen, in his inquiry into 
the *' Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative." " Part of 
the lands they acquired was converted into estates of inherit- 
ance for individuals ; part remained the property of the pub- 
lic, and was left to the disposal of the state. The former was 
called Bocland ; the latter Foldand. 

" Foldand, as the word imports, was the land of the folk, 
or people. It was the projjerty of the community. It might 
be occupied in common, or possessed in severalty. P>ut, while 
it continued to be folcland, it could not be alienated in perpe- 
tuity ; and therefore, on the expiration of the term for which 
it had been granted, it reverted to the community, and was 
again distributed by the same authority. 

" Bodand was held by book, or charter. It was land tliat 
had been severed by an act of government from the folcland, 
and converted into an estate of perpetual inheritance. It might 
belong to the Church, to the king, or to a subject. It might 
be alienable and devisable at the will of the proprietor. It 
might be limited in its descent without any power of aliena- 
tion in the possessor. It was often granted for a single life, 
or for more lives than one, with remainder in perpetuity to 
the Church. It was forfeited for various delin(iuencies to tlie 
state. 

''Folcland was subject to many burdens and exactions from 
which bocland was exempt. 'J'he possessors of folcland Avere 
bound to assist in the re])aration of royal vills and in other pub- 
lic works. They were liable to have travellers and others 
quartered on them for subsistence. They were required to give 
hospitality to kings and great men in their })rogresses through 
the country, to furnish them with carriages and relays of 
horses, and to extend the same assistance to their messengers, 
followers, and servants, and even to the persons who had charge 
of their haAvks, horses, and hounds. Such, at least, are the bur- 
dens from which lands are liberated when converted by charter 
into bocland. 

''Bocland was liable to none of these exactions. It was 
released from all services to the public, with the exception of 



English Const. FEUDAL TENURES. 389 

contributing to military expeditions, and to the reparation of 
castles and bridges. These duties or services were comprised 
in the phrase of trrnoda necessitas, which were said to be in- 
cumbent on all persons, so that none could be excused from 
them. The Church indeed contrived, in some cases, to obtain 
an exemption from them ; but in general its lands, like those 
of others, were subject to them" (p. 142). 

The obligations of the trinoda necessitas, and especially that 
of military service, have been sometimes thought to denote a 
feudal tenure. There is, however, a confusion into which we 
may fall by not sufficiently discriminating the rights of a king 
as chief lord of his vassals, and as sovereign of his subjects. 
In every country the supreme power is entitled to use the arm 
of each citizen in the public defence. The usage of all nations 
agrees with common reason in establishing this great principle. 
There is nothing, therefore, peculiarly feudal in this military 
service of land-holders ; it was due from the allodial pro- 
prietors upon the Continent ; it was derived from their Ger- 
man ancestors ; it had been fixed, probably, by the legislatures 
of the Heptarchy upon the first settlement in Britain. 

It is material, however, to observe that a thane forfeited his 
hereditary freehold by misconduct in battle — a penalty more 
severe than was inflicted upon allodial proprietors on the Con- 
tinent. We even find in the earliest Saxon laws that the 
sithcundman, who seems to have corresponded to the inferior 
thane of later times, forfeited his land by neglect of attendance 
in war ; for which an allodialist in France would only have 
paid his heribannum, or penalty. ISTevertheless, as the policy 
of different states may enforce the duties of subjects by more 
or less severe sanctions, I do not know that a law of forfeiture 
in such cases is to be considered as positively implying a 
feudal tenure. 

But a much stronger presumption is afforded by passages 
that indicate a mutual relation of lord and vassal among the 
free proprietors. The most pow^erful subjects have-not a 
natural right to the service of other freemen. But in the laws 
enacted during the Heptarchy we find that the sithcundman, 
or petty gentleman, might be dependent on a superior lord. 
This is more distinctly expressed in some ecclesiastical canons, 
apparently of the tenth century, which distinguished the king's 
thane from the land-holder, who depended upon a lord. Other 
proofs of this might be brought from the Anglo-Saxon laws. 
It is not, however, sufficient to prove a mutual relation be- 
tween the higher and lower order of gentry, in order to estab- 



390 ANGLO-SAXON CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Pakt I. 

lish the existence of feudal tenures. For this rehition was 
often personal, and bore the name of commendation. And no 
nation was so rigorous as the English in compelling every 
man, from the king's thane to the ceorl, to place himself under 
a lawful superior. Hence the question is not to be hastily de- 
cided on the credit of a few passages that express this grada- 
tion of dependence ; feudal vassalage, the object of our inquiry, 
being of a real, not a personal nature, and resulting entirely 
from the tenure of particular lands. But it is not unlikely 
that the personal relation of client, if I may use that word, 
might in a multitude of cases be changed into that of vassal. 
And, certainly, many of the motives Avhich operated in France 
to produce a very general commutation of allodial into feudal 
tenure, might have a similar influence in England, where the 
disorderly condition of society made it the interest of every 
man to obtain the protection of some potent lord. 

The word thane corresponds in its derivation to vassal ; and 
the latter term is used by Asserius, the contemporary biog- 
rapher of Alfred, in s})eaking of the nobles of that prince. In 
their attendance, too, upon the royal court, and the fidelity 
which was expected from them, the king's thanes seem exactly 
to have resembled that class of followers who, under different 
appellations, were the guards, as well as courtiers, of the 
Frank and Lombard sovereigns. But I have remarked that 
the word thane is not applied to the whole body of gentry in 
the more ancient laws, where the word earl is opposed to the 
ceorl, or roturier, and that of sithcxmdman to the royal thane. 
It would be too much to infer, from the extension of this latter 
word to a large class of persons, that we should interpret it 
with a close attention to etymology, a very uncertain guide in 
almost all investigations. 

For the age immediately preceding the Norman invasion we 
cannot have recourse to a better authority than Doomsday- 
book. That incomparable record contains the names of every 
tenant; and the conditions of his tenure, under the Confessor, 
as well as at the time of its compilation, and seems to give 
little countenance to the notion that a radical change in the 
system of our laws had been effected during the interval. In 
almost every page we meet with tenants either of the crown 
or of other lords, denominated thanes, freeholders (liberi 
homines), or socagers (socmanni). Some of these, it is stated, 
might sell their lands to whom they pleased ; others were re- 
stricted from alienation. Some, as it is expressed, might go 
with their lands whither they would ; by which I understand 



English Const. FEUDAL TENURES. 391 

the right of commending themselves to any patron of their 
choice. Tliese, of course, couhl not be feudal tenants in any 
proper notion of that term. Others could not depart from tlie 
lord whom they served ; not, certainly, that they were per- 
sonally bound to the soil, but that, so long as they retained it, 
the seigniory of the superior could not be defeated. But I am 
not aware that military service is specified in any instance 
to be due from one of these tenants ; though it is difficult to 
speak as to a negative proposition of this kind with any 
confidence. 

No direct evidence appears as to the ceremony of homage, 
or the oath of fealty, before the Conquest. The feudal exac- 
tion of aid, in certain prescribed cases, seems to have been 
unknown. Still less could those of wardship and marriage 
prevail, whicli were no general parts of the great feudal sys- 
tem. The English lawyers, through an imperfect acquaintance 
with the history of feuds upon the Continent, have treated 
these unjust innovations as if they had formed essential parts 
of the system, and sprung naturally from the relation between 
lord and vassal. And, with reference to the present question, 
Sir Henry Spelman has certainly laid too much stress upon 
them in concluding that feudal tenures did not exist among 
the Anglo-Saxons, because their lands were not in ward, nor 
their persons sold in marriage. 

It has been shown in another place how the right of terri- 
torial jurisdiction was generally, and at last inseparably, con- 
nected with feudal tenure. Of this right we meet frequent 
instances in the laws and records of the Anglo-Saxons. And 
Doomsday -book is full of decisive proofs that the English 
lords had their courts wherein they rendered justice to their 
suitors, like the Continental nobility — privileges which are 
noticed with great precision in that record, as part of the 
statistical survey. For the right of jurisdiction, at a time 
when punishments were almost wholly pecuniary, was a matter 
of property, and sought from motives of rapacity as well as 
pride. 

Whether, therefore, the law of feudal tenures can be said 
to have existed in England before the Conquest, must be left 
to every reader's determination. Perhaps any attempt to 
decide it positively would end in a verbal dispute. In tracing 
the history of every political institution, three things are to 
be considered — the principle, the form, and the name. The 
last will probably not be found in any genuine Anglo-Saxon 
record. Of the form, or the peculiar ceremonies and incidents 



392 NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. Part I. 

of a regular fief, there is some, though not much, appearance. 
But those who reflect upon the dependence in which free and 
even noble tenants held their estates of other subjects, and 
upon the privileges of territorial jurisdiction, will, I think, 
perceive much of the intrinsic cliaracter of the feudal relation, 
though in a less mature and systematic sha[)e than it assumed 
after the Norman Conquest." 

11 It will probably be never disputed again that lands were granted by a military 
tenure before the Cdnquest. But the general tenure of lands was still allodial. We 
may jirobably not err very much in su]i|iiising tliat the state of tenures in England 
under Canute or the Confessor was a good deal like those in France under Charle- 
magne or Charles the Bald — an allodial trunk with numerous branches of feudal 
benetice grafted into it. But the conversion of the one mode of tenure into the 
other, so frequent in France, does not appear by evidence to have prevailed on this side 
of the Channel. On this question Professor Stubbs remarks (" Select Charters," etc., 
p. i:i) : " From the end of the tenth century a change sets in which might ultimately, 
by a slow and steady series of causes and consequences, have produced something 
like Continental feudalism. The great position taken by iidgar and Canute, to 
whom the princes of the other king(loms of the island submitted as vassals, had the 
efl'ect of centralizing the government and increasing the power of the king. Early 
in the eleventh century he seems to have entered on the right of disposing of the 
public land without reference to the witan, and of calling up to his own court by writ 
suits which had not yet exhausted the powers of the lower tribunals. The number 
of royal vassals was thus greatly increased, and with them the power of royal and 
noble jurisdictions. Canute proceded so far in the direction of imperial feudalism 
as to rearrange the kingdom under a very small number of great earls, who were 
strong enough in some cases to transmit'their autliority to their children, though 
not without new investiture, and who, had time been given for the system to 
work, would have no doubt develoi)ed tliesame sort of feudality as prevailed abroad. 
Already by subinfeudation or by commendation great portions of the land of the 
country were being held by a feudal tenure, and tlie allodial tenure, which had once 
been universal, was heconiing the privilege of a few great nobles too strong to be 
unseated, or a local usage in a class of land-owners too humble to be dangerous." 



NOTES TO CHAPTEK Vlll. 



393 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. — Part I. 



I. THE BRETWALDAS. 

These seven princes emimeratei.1 by 
Bede have been called Bietwaldas, an<l 
they have, by some late historians, been 
advanced to higlier importance and to a 
ditterent kind of power than, as it appears 
to me, there is any sufficient ground to 
bestow on them. Bede is the original 
witness for the seven monarehs who be- 
fore his time had enjoyed a preponder- 
ance over the Anglo-Saxons south of the 
Humbert : " Qui cunctis australibusgeutis 
Anglorum provinciis, quae Humbrse flu- 
vio et contiguis ei terminis sequestrantur 
a Borealibus, imperarunt." (Hist. Keel., 
lib. ii., c. 5.) The four first-named hud no 
authority over Northumbria; but the last 
three being sovereigns of that Icingdom, 
their sway would include the whole of 
England. 

The Saxon Chronicle, under the reign 
of Egbert, says that he was the eighth 
who iiad a iloiiiiiiion over Britain; using 
the reiiiarkahlc word Bretv^^ALDA, which 
is found uowliere else. Tliis, by its root, 
waldan, a Saxon verb, to rule (whence our 
word wield), implies a ruler of Britain or 
the Britons. The Chronicle then copies 
the enumeration of the other seven in 
Bede, with a little abridgment. The 
kings mentioned by Bede are .iElli or 
Ella, founder of the kingdom of the South- 
Saxons about 477; Ceaulin, of Wessex, 
after the interval of nearly a century; 
Ethelbert, of Kent, the first Christian 
king; Redwald, of East Anglia; after him 
three Northumbrian kings in succession, 
Edwin, Oswald, Oswin. We have, there- 
fore, sufficient testimony that before the 
middle of the seventh century four kings, 
from four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, had, at 
intervals of time, become superior to the 
rest; excepting, however, the Northum- 
brians, whom Bede distinguishes, and 
whose subjection to a southern prince 
does not appear at all probable. None, 
therefore, of these could well have been 
called Bretwalda, or ruler of the Britons, 
while not even his own countrymen were 
wholly under his sway. 

We' now come to three Northumbrian 
kings, Edwin, Oswald, and Oswin, who 
ruled, in Bede's language, with greater 
power than the preceding, over all the in- 
habitants of Britain, both English and 
British, with the sole exception of the 
men of Kent. This he reports in another 



place with respect to Edwin, the first 
Northumbrian convert to Christianity; 
whose worldly power, he says, increased 
so much that, what no English sovereign 
had done before, he extended his domin- 
ion to the farthest bounds of Britain, 
whether inhabited by English or by Brit- 
ons. (Hist. Eccl., lib. ii., e. 9.) There is a 
remarkable confirmation of this testimony 
of Bede in a life of St. Columba, publish- 
ed by the BoUandists, in which Oswald is 
called " totius Britannia; imperator ordi- 
natus a Deo." (Acta Sanctorum, Jini. 23.) 
Wv have here probably a distinct recog- 
nition of the Saxon word Bretwalda; for 
what else could answer to emperor of 
Britain? And, as far as I know, it is the 
only one that exists. It seems more 
likely that this writing refers to a distinct 
title bestowed on Oswald by his subjects, 
than that he means to assert as a fact 
that he truly ruled over all Britain. This 
is not very credible, notwithstanding the 
language of Bede, who loves to amplify 
the power of favorite monarehs. For 
though it may be admitted that these 
Northumbrian kings enjoyed at times a 
preponderance over the other Anglo-Sax- 
on principalities, we know that both Ed- 
win and Oswald lost their lives in great 
defeats by Penda of Mercia. Nor were 
the Stralhcluyd Britons in any perma- 
nent subjection. The name of Bretwal- 
da, as applied to these three kings, though 
not so absurd as to make it incredible that 
they assumed it, asserts an untruth. 

Kapin was the first wlio broached the 
theory of an elective Bretwalda, possess- 
ing a sort of monarchical supremacy in the 
constitution of the Heptarchy; something 
like, as he says, the dignity of stadt- 
holder of the Netherlands. It was taken 
up in later times by Turner, Lingard, Pal- 
grave, and Lappenberg. But for this there 
is certainly no evidence whatever; nor do 
I perceive in it anything but the very re- 
verse of probabilitv, especially in the 
earlier instances. With what we read in 
Bede we may be content, confirmed as 
with respect to a Northumbrian sover- 
eign it appears to be by the Life of Co- 
lumba; and the plain history will be no 
more than this — that four princes from 
among the southern Anglo-Saxon king- 
doms, at different times obtained, proba- 
bly by force, a superioi'ity over the rest; 
that afterwards three Northumbrian 
kings united a similar supremacy with the 



394 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



government of their own dominions ; and 
that, havina; been successful in reducing 
tlie iiritons of the north and also the Scots 
into subjection, they assumed the title of 
Bretwulda, or ruler of Britain, 'i'his title 
was not taken by any later kings, thougli 
some in the eighth century were very 
powerful in England; nor did it attract 
much attention, since we find the word 
only once employed by an historian, and 
never in a charter. The consequence I 
should draw is, that too great prominence 
has been given to the appellation, and un- 
due inferences sometimes derived from it, 
by the eminent writers above mentioned. 

II. SAXON KINGS OF ALL ENGLAND. 

The reduction of all Eugland under a 
single sovereign was accouiplished by Ed- 
ward the Elder, who may, therefore, be 
reckoned the founder of our monarchy 
more justly than Egbert. From this tiuie 
a striking change is remarkable in the 
style of our kings. Edward, of whom we 
have no extant charters after these great 
submissions of the native princes, calls 
himself only " AnguI-.Sa.Konum rex." 
But in those of his son Athelstan, such as 
are reputed genuine (for the tone is still 
more pompous in some marked by j\lr. 
Kemble with an asterisk), we meet, as 
early as 927, with "totius Britannia mon- 
arclius, rex, rector, or basileus;" " totius 
BritaiiniEB solio sublimatus;" and oili- 
er phrases of instil ar sovereignty. What 
has been attributed to the imaginary 
Bretwaldas, belonged truly to the kings of 
the tenth century. And tlie grandilo- 
quence of their titles is sometimes almost 
ridiculous. They affected particularly 
that of Basileus as something more ini- 
perial than king, and less easily under- 
stood. Edwy and Edgar are remarkable 
for this pomp, which shows itself also in 
the spurious charters of older kings. But 
Edmund and Edred with more truth and 
simplicity had generally denominated 
themselves " rex Anglorum, cicterorum- 
que in eircuitu persistentium gubernator 
et rector." An expression which was re- 
tained sometimes by Edgar. And though 
these exceedingly pompous phrases seem 
to have become less frequent in the next 
century, we And " totius Albionis rex," 
and equivalent terms, in all the charters of 
Edward the Confessor. 

" As a general rule it may be observed 
that before the tenth century the proem 
is comparatively simple; that about that 
time the influence of the Byzantine court 
began to be felt: and that from the latter 
half of that century pedantry and absurd- 
ity struggle for the mastery." (Ivemble's 
Introduction to vol. ii., p. x.) 

III. EORLS AND OKORLS. 

It has been remarked in the text that 
the proper division of freemen was into 
EoRLS and Ceokls : ge earle — ge ccorle; 
ge eorlische — ge ceorl'ische, corresponding 



to the phrase " gentle and simple " of later 
times. The Eorlcundmati was generally, 
though not necessarily, a freeholder; he 
might, unless restrained by special tenure, 
depart from or alienate his land; he was, 
if a freeholder, a judge in the County 
Court; he might marry, or become a 
priest, at his discretion; his oath weighed 
heavily in compurgation ; above all, his 
life was valued at a high composition ; we 
add, of course, the general respect which 
attaches itself to the birth and position of 
a gentleman. Two classes indeed there 
were, both Eorlcund, or of gentle birth, 
and so called in opiiosition to ceorls, but 
in a relative subordination. Sir F. I'al- 
grave has pointed out the distinction in 
the following passage: "The whole 
scheme of the Anglo-Saxon law is founded 
upon the presumption thatevery freeman, 
not being a Hlaford,* was attached to a 
superior, to whom he was bound by fealty, 
and from whom he could claim a legal 
protection or warranty, when accuseti of 
any transgression or crime. If, therefore, 
the eorlcund individual did not possess 
the real property which, either fiom its 
tenure or its extent, was such as to con- 
stitute a lordship, he was then ranked in 
the very numerous class whose members, 
in Wessex and its dependent stalis, were 
originally known by the name of sitlicund- 
meii, an appellation which we nuiy para- 
phrase by the heraldic expression, 'gentle 
by birth and blood.' t The term of sith- 
cundman, however, was only in use in the 
earlier periods. After the reign of Alfred 
it is lost; and the most comprehensive and 
significant denomination given to this 
class is that of sixhcendmen, indicating 
their position between the highest and 
lowest law-worthy classes of society. 
Other designations were derived from 
their services and tenures. Radechniglits, 
and lesser thanes, seem to be included in 
this rank, and to which, in many instances, 
the general name of solcemen vi-as applied. 
But, however designated, the sithcund- 
man, or six hoendman, appears in every 
instance in the same relative position in 
the community — classed among the no- 
bility, whenever the eorl and the ceorl are 
placed in direct opposition to each other; 
always considered below the territorial 
aristocracy, and yet distinguished from 
the villenage by the important right of 
selecting his hiaford at his will and pleas- 
ure. By common right the sixhcendman 
was not to be annexed to the glebe. To 
use the expressions employed by the com- 
pilers of Doomsday, he could 'go with his 
land wheresoever he chose,' or, leaving 
his land, he might ' commend ' himself to 



• HLAPoni) was the chief. " the Loafgiver. a name 
which, tlirousrh a series of Boftenines and contractione. and 
with a comolete forgeifulneaa of its primitive meaning, has 
settled down into ti.e modern form of Lord" — Freeman's 
■Hist, of the Norman Conquest." i. 92. 

t 1b not the word aithcuodman properly descriptive of ht0 
dependence on a lord, from the Saxoo veth bithian, to fol- 
low 7 



NOTES TO CnAPTER VIII. 



395 



any Iilafonl who would accept his fealty " 
(vol. i., p. 14). 

Tlie inHueiice of Danish couuectious i)ro 
ducL'd great change in the nomenclature 
.of ranks. Eorl lost its gene i:il sense of 
good birth and became an otticial title, for 
the most part equivalent to aldrruian, the 
governor of a shire or district, it is used 
in this sense, for tlie first time, in the laws 
of Edward the Elder, and in the time of 
Edgar it liad fully acquired its secondary 
meaning; in its original sense it seems to 
have been replaced by Thane. Certain 
it is that we find tlume opposed to ceorl in 
the later period of Anglo-.Sa.\on monu- 
ments, as eorl is in the earlier — as if the 
law knew no other broad line of demarca 
tion among laymen, saving always the of- 
ficial dignities and the royal family.* And 
the distinction between the greater and 
the lesser thanes was not lost, though they 
were put on a level as to composition. 
Meantime the composition for an earl, 
whether we confine that word to office or 
suppose that it extended to the wealthiest 
landholders, was far higher in the later 
period than that for a thane, as was also 
his heriot when that came into use. The 
heriot of the king's thane was above that 
of what was called a medial thane, or 
mesne vassal, the sithcundman, or syx- 
hynder, as I apprehend, of an earlier 
style. 

In the laws of the Continental Saxons 
we find the rank corresponding to the 
forlcunde of our own country denomi- 
nated edelingi or noble, as opposed to the 
fritingi or ordinary, freemen. This ap- 
pellation was not lost in England, and was 
perhaps sometimes applied to nobles; but 
we find it generally reserved for the royal 
family. Eihel or noble, sometimes con- 
tracted, forms, as is well known, the pe- 
culiar prefix to the names of our Anglo 
Saxon royal house. And the word atlieling 
was used, not as in Germany for a noble, 
but a prince; and his composition was 
not only above that of a thane, but of an 
alderman. He ranked as an arclibishop 
in this respect, the alderman as a bishop. 
It is necessary to mention this, lest, in 
speaking of the words eorl and ceorl as 
originally distributive, I should seem to 
have forgotten the distinctive superiority 
of the royal family. But whether this had 
always been the case I am not prepared to 
determine. The aim of the later kings, I 
mean after Alfred, was to carry the mo- 
narchical principle as high as the temper 
of the nation would permit. Hence they 
prefer to the name of king, which was as- 



• "That the thane, at leagt originally, wasamilitary fol- 
lower, a holder by military eervice, seems certain: though in 
later times the rank seems to have been enjoyed by all great 
land-holders, as the natural concomitant ot possession to a 
certain value. By Mercian law, lie appears as a * twelfhynde ' 
man, his ' were ' hein; 121)0 shillings. That this dignity ceased 
from being exclusively of a military cliaracter is evident from 
numerous passages in the laws, where thanes are mentioned in 
a judicial capacity, and as civil officers." — Thorpe's "Glos- 
sary to Ancient Laws," voc. Thegen. 



sociated in all the Germanic nations with 
a limited power, the more indefinite ap- 
pellations of impeiator and basileus. And 
the lattec-of these they borrowed from the 
Byzantiifb court, liking it rather better 
than the other, not merely out of the pom- 
pous atl'ectatiou characteristic of their 
style ill that period, but because, being 
less intelligible, it served to strike more 
awe, and also probably because the title 
of Western emperor seemed to be already 
a])pr<)priated in Germany. It was natural 
that they would endeavor to enhance the 
superiority of all athelings above the sur- 
rounding nobility. 

In Doomsday-book, which is a record of 
the state of Anglo-Saxon orders of society 
under Edward the Confessor, we lind new 
denominations. The word ceorl does not 
occur, but is represented by villanus, 
which is also distinguishable. And this 
word is frequently used in the first Anglo- 
Norman reigns as the equivalent of ceorl. 
Ko one ought to doubt that they expressed 
the same persons. In Doomstlay-book the 
number of villani is 10)S,000. We find 
also a very numerous class, ;ibove 8:^,000, 
styled bordarii, who must have been also 
ceorls, distinguished by some legal differ- 
ence, some peculiarity of service or tenure, 
well understood at the time. A small 
number are denominated coscetz, or 
cosceti. Tliere are also several minor de- 
nominations in Doomsday, all of which, 
as they do not denote slaves, and cer- 
tainly not thanes, must have been varie 
ties of the ceorl kind. The most frequent 
of these appillations is cotarii. 

But, ln'sidis these peasants, there are 
two apiK-Uations which it is less easy, 
though it would be more important, to de 
fine. These are the tiberi homines and 
the sonmanni. Of the former there are 
in Doomsday-book about 12,.300; of the 
latter, about 23,000; forming together 
about one-eighth of the whole population, 
that is, of male adults. It is remarkable 
that in Norfolk alone we have 44S7 libei-i 
homines and 4588 socmen — the whole eiiu 
merated jiopulatioii being 27,087. But in 
.Suffolk, out of a jKipulation of 20,401, we 
find 7470 liberl hninincs, with 1060 socmen. 
Thus these two counties contained 
almost all the liberi homines of the 
kingdom. In IJncolnshire, on the other 
iiaud, where 11,504 are returned as soc 
men, the word liber homo does not occur. 
These Lincolnshire socmen are not, as 
usual in other counties, mentioned among 
occupiers of the demesne lands, but min- 
gled with the villeins and bordars : some- 
times not standing first in the enumera- 
tion, so as to show that, in one county, 
they were both a more numerous and 
more subordinate class than in the rest of 
the realm. 

The concise distinction between what 
we should call freehold and copvhold is 
made by the forms of enteringeacli manor 
throughout Doomsd.iy-book. Liberi homi 



396 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



nes invariably, and socmen, I believe, ex- 
cept in Lincolnsliire, occupied the one, 
vilkmi and bordarii tlie otlier. Hence U- 
brum tenement It III and viUeiiagiuni. What 
then, in Auglo-Saxoa language, was the 
kiiul of the two former classes? We must, 
upon the whole, I conceive, take them for 
ceorls more fortunate than the rest, who 
had acijuired some freeliold land, or to 
whose ancestors possibly it had been al- 
lotted in the original setllemeut. It indi- 
cates a remarkable variety in the condi- 
tion of these East-Anglian counties, Nor- 
folk and Sutlolk, and a more ditiused free- 
dom in their inhabitants. The population, 
it must strike us, was greatly higher, rela- 
tively to their size, tlian in any other part 
of England; and the multitude of snuill 
manors and of parish cliurches, which 
still continue, bespeaks tliis progress. 
The socmen, as well as the iiberi homines, 
in whose condition there may have been 
little difference, except in Lincolnshire, 
where we have seen tluit, for whatever 
cause, those denominated socmen were 
little, if at all, better than the villani, 
were all commended ; they had all some 
lord, though bearing to him a relation 
neither of lief nor of villenage; they could 
in general, thougii with some exceptions, 
alienate their hinds at pleasure; it has 
been thouglit that they might pay some 
small rent in acknowledgment of com- 
mendation; but tlie one class undoubt- 
edly, and probably the other, were 
freeholders in every legal sense of tlie 
word, holding by that ancient and re- 
spectable tenure, free and common socage, 
or in a manner at least amihigous to it. 
Though socmen are chiefly mentioned in 
the Danelage, other obscure denomina- 
tions of occupiers occur in Wessex and 
Mercia, which seem to have denoted a 
similar class. 

It may be remarked here that many of 
our modern writers draw too unfavorable 
a picture of the condition of the Anglo- 
Sa.xon ceorl. Few, indeed, fall into the 
capital mistake of Jlr. -Sharon Turner, by 
speaking of him as legally in servitude, 
like tlie villein of Bracton"s age. Hut we 
often find a tendency to consider him as 
in a very uiicomfortal)le condition, little 
caring " to wliat lion's paw he might fall," 
as Bolingbroke said in 1745, and treated 
by his lord as a miserable dependent. 
Ilalf a century since, in tlie days of .Sir 
William .Tones, Granville Sharj), and 
Major ("artwright, the Anglo-.Saxon con- 
stitution was built on universal suffrage; 
every man in his tithing a jiartaker of 
sovereignty, and sending from his rood of 
land an annual representative to the wit- 
enagemot. .Such a theory could not 
stand the first glimmerings of historical 
knowledge in a miiid tolerably sound. 
But wliile we absolutely deny political 
privileges of this kind to the ceorl, we 
need not assert his life to have been mis- 
erable. He had very definite legal rights, 



and acknowledged capacities of aeVjuiring 
more; that he was sometimes exposed to 
oppression is probable enough; but, in 
reality, tlie records of all kinds that have 
desceniled to us do not si)eak in such- 
strong language of this as we may read in 
those of the Continent. We have no in- 
surrection of tlie ceorls, no outrages by 
themselves, no atrocious punishment by 
tlieir masters, as in Normandy. Terhap's 
we are a little too much struck by their 
obligation to reside on the lands which 
tliey cultivated ; the term ascriptus glebte 
denotes, in our apprehension, an ignoble 
servitude. It is, of course, inconsistent 
with our modern equality of rights; but 
we are to remember that he who deserted 
Ills land, and consequently his lord, did 
so in order to become a thief. HlafordUs 
men, of whom we read so much, were in- 
variably of this character — men without 
land, lord, or law, who lived upon what 
they could take. For the sake of protect- 
ing tlie honest ceorl from such men, as 
well as of protecting the lord in what, if 
property be regarded at all, must be pro- 
tected — his rights to services legally due 
— it was necessary to restrain the culti- 
vator from quitting his land. Exceptions 
to this might occur, as we find among the 
liheri homini's and others in Doomsday; 
but it was the general rule. We might 
also ask whether a lessee for years at pres- 
ent is not in one sense ascriptus (jlchfe? 
It is true that he may go wherever he 
will, and, if he continue to pay his rent 
and perforin his covenants, no more can 
be said. But if he does not this, the law 
will follow his person, and, though it can 
not force him to return, will make it by 
no means his interest to desert the prem- 
ises. Such remedies as the law now 
furnishes were not in the power of the 
Saxon landlord; but all that any lord 
could desire was to have the services 
performed, or to receive a compensation 
for them. 

IV. THE WITENAGEMOT. 

The best explanation of the history of 
the WHenagemot has been given by Mr. 
Freeman in his " Hist, of the Norman 
Conquest" (i., 106 seq.). Mr. Freeman 
points out that every freeman had a theo- 
retical right to attend the assembly of the 
kingdom, as well as the assembly of the 
shire, but such a right of attendance be- 
came, of course, purely nugatory. " The 
mass of the people could not attend, they 
would not care to attend, they would find 
themselves of no account if they did at- 
tend. They would, therefore, without any 
formal abrogation of their right, gradu- 
ally cease from attending. The idea of 
representation had not yet arisen; tliose 
who did not appear in person, had no 
means of appearing by deputy; of elec 
tion or delegation there is not the slightest 
tr.ace, though it might often happen that 
those who staid away might feel that their 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



397 



rich or official neighbors who went would 
attend to tlieir wishes, and would fairly 
act in their interests. By this process, 
an originally democratic assembly, with- 
out any formal exclusion of any class of 
its members, gradually shrunk up into an 
aristocratic assembly. * * * * Thus an 
assembly of all the freemen of Wessex, 
when those freemen could not attend jier- 
sonally, and when they had no means of 
'ittemliiig by representatives, gradually 
Ciianged into an assembly attended by 
few or none but the king's tliegns. The 
great officers of church and state, eorldor- 
men, bishops, abbots, would attend: the 
ordinary thegns would attend more laxly, 
but still in considerable numbers; the 
king would preside ; a few leading men 
would discuss; the general mass of the 
thegns, whether they tormally voted or 
not, would make their approval or disap- 
proval j)racticaUy felt; no doubt the form 
still remained of at least announcing the 
resolutions taken to any of the ordinary 
freemen, whom curiosity had drawn to 
the spot; most likely the form still re- 
mained of demanding their ceremonial 
assent, though without any fear that the 
habitual 'yea, yea,' would ever be ex- 
changed for ' nay, nay.' It is thus that, 
in the absence of representation, a 
democratic franchise, as applied to a 
large country, gradually becomes unreal 
or delusive. * * * * 

" As to the constitution of these great 
councils in anj^ English kingdom, our in- 
formation is of the vaguest kind. The 
members are always described in the 
loosest way. We find the witan con- 
stantly assembling, constantly passing 
laws, but we find no law prt'scril)iiig or 
defining the constitution of the a.-sc lulily 
itself. We find no trace of rejjrcsentation 
or election ; we find no trace of any prop- 
erty qualification; we find no trace of 
nomination by the crown, except in so far 
as all the great officers of the court and 
the kingdom were constantly present. On 
the other hand, we have seen that all tlie 
leading men, eorldormen, bishops, abbots, 
and a considerable body of other thegns, 
did attend; we have seen that the peojjle 
as a body were in some way associated 
with the legislative acts of their chiefs, 
that those acts were in some sort the acts 
of the people themselves, to which they 
had themselves assented, not merely the 
edicts of superiors which they had to 
obey. We have seen that, on some par- 
ticular occasions, some classes at least of 
the people did actually take a part in the 
proceedings of the national council; thus 
the citizens of London are more than once 
recorded to have taken a sliare in the 
election of kings. No theory that I know 
of will explain all these phenomena, ex- 
cept that which I have just tried to draw 
out. This is, that every freeman had an 
abstract right to be present, but that any 
actual participation in the proceedjnss of 



the assembly had, gradually and imper- 
ceptibly, come to be confined to the lead 
ing men, to the king's thegns, strength 
ened, under peculiarly favorable circum- 
stances, by the presence of exceptional 
classes of freemen, like the London citi- 
zens." 

V. TRIAL BY JURY. 

The following note relates to the subse- 
quent history of trial by jury. 

In the " Leges Henrici I'rimi," a trea- 
tise compiled probably early in the reign 
of Henry II. [Stubbs], and not intended 
to ])ass for legi.slative,* are numerous 
statements as to the usual course of pro 
cedure, especially on crinunal charges 
In this treatise we find no allusion to 
juries; the trial was either before the 
Court of the Hundred or that of the terri 
torial judge, assisted by his free vassals. 
But we do find the great original principle, 
trial by peers, and, as it is c:iUed, per pais; 
that is, in the presence of the country, 
opposed to a distant and unknown juris 
diction — a principle truly derived from 
Saxon, though consonant also to Norman 
law, dear to both nations, and guaranteed 
to both, as it was clainitMl by both, in the 
2yth section of Magna Charta. " Onus 
quisque per pares suos judicandus est, 
et ejusdem provincial; peregrina autein 
judicia modis omnibus submovenms." 
(Leges H. I., c. 31). 

As the court had no function but to see 
that the formalities of the combat, the 
ordeal, or the compurgation were duly re- 
garded, and to observe whether the party 
succeeded or succumbed, no oath from 
them, nor any reduction of their numbers, 
could be required. But the law of Nor- 
mandy had already established the in- 
quest by sworn recognitors, twelve or 
twenty-four in numbci', who were sup- 
posed to be well accjuainted with the 
facts; and this in civil as well as criminal 
proceedings. We have seen an instance 
of it, not long before the Conquest, among 
ourselves, in the history of the monk of 
Kanisey' [.See p. :!.st).] It was in the de- 
velopment of this amelioration in civil 
justice that we find instances during this 
period where a small number have been 
chosen from the County Court and sworn 
to declare the truth, when the judge 
might suspect the partiality or ignorance 
of the entire body. Thus in suits for the 
recovery of property the public mind was 
gradually accustomed to see the jurisdic- 
tion of the freeholdei-s in their court 
transferred to a more select number of 
sworn and well-informed men. But this 



* It may be here obaerved, that, in all prohability, the title 
" Lecea Henrici Primi " has been continued to the whole 
boo:i frora the first two chapters, which do really continue 
laws of Henry 1., namely, hia cener.nl charter, and 'that to the 
city of London. A Bimilar inadvertence has cauied the well- 
known bonk commonly ascribed to Thomas h Kempis to be 
called " De Imitaiione Christi,*' which is merely the title of 
the first chaptej. 



398 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



was not yet a matter of right, nor even 
probably oC very common usage. It was 
in this state of things that lleniy H. 
brought in tlie Assize of Novel Disseizin. 

Tills gave an alternative to the tenant 
on a suit for the recovery of land, if he 
chose not to risk the combat, of jjutting 
himself on the assize; that is, of being 
tried by four knights summoned by the 
sheriff and twelve more selected by them, 
forming the sixteen sworn recognitors, 
as they were called, by whose verdict the 
cause was determined. This may be re- 
garded as the first step to trial by jury in 
civil cases. An assize of novel disseizin 
was always held in the King's Court or 
that of the justices itinerant, and not be- 
fore the County or Hundred, whose juris- 
diction began in consequence rapidly to 
decline. 

Changes not less important were ef- 
fected in criminal processes during the 
second part of the Norman period, which 
we consider as terminating with the ac- 
cession of Edward r. Henry II. abolislicd 
the ancient privilege of com|iurgation by 
tlie oaths of friends, tlie manifest foun- 
tain of unblushing perjury ; though it long 
afterwards was preserved in London and 
in boroughs by some exemption which 
does not appear. This, however, left the 
favorite, or at least, the ancient and Eng- 
lish, mode of defence by cliewing conse- 
crated bread, liandling hot iron, and otlicr 
tricks called ordeals. But near the begin- 
ning of Henry IH.'s reign the Church, 
grown wiser and more foud of her system 
of laws, abolished all kinds of ordeal in 
the fourth Lateran council. The comliat 
remained; but it was not applicable un- 
less an injured prosecutor or ap|iellant 
came forward to demand it. In cases 
where a party was only charged on vehe- 
ment suspicion of a crime, it was neces- 
sary to find a substitute for the forbidden 
superslition. He might be compelled, by 
a statute of Henry II. to abjure the 
realm. A writ of 3 Henry III. dire(!ts 
that those against whom the susijicions 
were very strong should be kept in safe 
custody. Hut this was absolutely incom- 
I)atible with English liberty and with 
Magna (^harta. " No further enactment," 
says Sir F. I'algrave, " was made; and the 
usages which already prevailed led to a 
general adoption of tlie proceedings which 
had hitherto existed as a privilege or as a 
favor — that is to say, of proving or dis- 
proving the testimony of the first set of 
inquest-men by the testimony of a second 
array — and the individual accused by the 
a])peal, or presente<l by the general opin- 
ion of the hundi-ed, was allowed to defend 
himself by the particular testimony of the 
hundred to which he belonged. For this 
purpose another inquest was impanelled, 
sometimes composed of twelve persons 
named IVoiii the ' visne ' and three from 
earli of the adjoining townships; and 
sometimes the very same jurymen who 



had presented the offence might, if the 
culprit thought ht, be examined a second 
time, as the witnesses or in(}uest of the 
points in issue. But it seems worthy of 
remark that ' trial by inquest ' in criminal 
cases never seems to have been introduced 
except into those courts which acted by 
the king's writ or commission. The pre- 
sentment or declaration of those officers 
which fell within the cognizance of the 
hundred jury or the leet jury, the repre- 
sentatives of the ancient echevins, was 
liiial and conclusive; no traverse, or trial 
by a second jury, in the nature of a petty 
jury, being allowed" (p. 2(59). 

Thus trialby a petty jury upon criminal 
charges came in ; it is of the reign of 
Henry III., and not earlier. And it is to 
be remarked, as a contirmation of this 
view, that no one was compellable to 
plead, that is, the inquest was to be of 
his own choice. But if he declined to en- 
dure it he was remanded to prison, and 
treated with a severity which the statute 
of Westminster 1, in the third year of 
Edward I., calls peine forte et dure: ex- 
tended afterwards, by a cruel interpreta- 
tion, to that atrocious punishment on 
those who refused to stand a trial, com- 
monly in order to preserve their lands from 
forfeiture, which was not taken away by 
law till the last century. 

Thus was trial by jury established, both 
in real actions, or suits allecting property 
in land, and in criminal procedure, the 
former preceding by a little the latter. 
But a new question arises as to the prov- 
ince of these early juries; and the view 
lately taken is very different from that 
which has been commonly received. 

" Trial by jury," says Sir F. Palgrave, 
" according to the old English law, was a 
proceeding essentially different from the 
modern tribunal, still bearing the same 
name, by which it has been replaced, 
ilurynien in the present day are triers of 
the issue; they are individuals who found 
their opinion upon the evidence, whether 
oral or written, adduced before them : and 
the verdict delivci-cd by tliem is their dec- 
laration of the judgment which they have 
formed. But tlie ancient jurymen were 
not impanelled to examine into the credi- 
bility of the evidence; the question was 
not discussed and argued before them ; 
they, the jurymen, were the witnesses 
themselves, and tlie verdict was substan- 
tially the examination of these witnesses, 
wlio of their own knowledge, and with- 
out the aid of other testimony, alForded 
their evidence resjiecting the facts in 
question to the best of their belief. In 
its primitive form a trial by jury was 
therefore only a trial by witnesses; and 
jurymen were distinguished from any 
other witnesses only by customs which 
imposed upon them the obligation of an 
oatli and regulated their number. 

" I find it necessary to introduce this 
description of the ancient ' Trial by Jury,' 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



399 



because, unless the real functions of the 
original jurymen be distinctly presented 
to the reader, his familiar knowledge of 
the existing course of jurisprudence will 
lead to the most erroneous conclusions. 
Many of those who have descanted upon 
the excellence of our venerated national 
franchise seem to have supposed that it 
has descended to us unchanged from the 
days of Alfred; and the patriot who 
claims the jury as the 'judgment by his 
peers ' secured by Magna Cliarta can 
never liave suspected how distinctly the 
trhil is resolved into a mere examination 
of witnesses " (I'algrave). 

This theory is sustained by a great dis- 
play of erudition, which fully establishes 
that the juries had such a knowledge, 
however acquired, of the facts as enabled 
tliem to render a verdict without hearing 
any other testimony in open court than 
that of tlie parties themselves, fortified, if 
it miglit be, by written documents ad- 
duced. Hence the knights of the grand 
assize are called Recognitors, a name oft- 
en given to others sworn on an inquest. 

At what precise period witnesses dis- 
tinct from the jury themselves, and who 
had no voice in the verdict, first began 
to be regularly summoned, cannot be 
ascertained. The first trace of such a 
practice occurs in the 2.3d year of Edward 
III., and had probably been creeping in 
previously. That it was perfectly estab- 
lislied by the middle of the 15th century 
we have clear evidence from Fortesciie's 
treatise ' De Laudibus Legum Angliie' 
(c. 26), written soon after 1450 : 

" Twelve good and true men being 
sworn as in the manner above related, 
leg:illy qualified — tliat is, having, over 
anil Iicsides their movable possessions, in 
himl sufficient (as was said) wherewith to 
maintain their rank and station —neither 
suspected by nor at variance with either 
of tlie parties; all of the neighborhood; 
there shall be read to them in English by 
the court the record and nature of the 
plea at length which is depending between 
the parties; and the issue thereupon shall 



be plainly laid before them, concerning 
the truth of which those wlio are so sworn 
are to certify the court; which done, each 
of the parties, by themselves or their 
counsel, in presence of the court, shall de- 
clare and lay open to the jury all and 
singular the matters and evidences where- 
by they think they may be able to inform 
the court concerning the truth of the 
point in question : after which each of 
the parties has a liberty to produce be- 
fore tlie court all such witnesses as they 
l)lease, or can get to appear on their be- 
lialf, who, being charged upon their 
oaths, shall give in evidence all that 
they know touching the truth of the 
fact concerning which the parties 
are at issue. And if necessity so reipiire, 
the witnesses may be heard and examined 
apart, till they shall have deposed all that 
they have to give in evidence, so that 
wliat the one has declared shall not in- 
form or induce anotlier witness of the 
same side to give his evidence in the 
same words, or to the very same eliect. 
The whole of the evidence being gone 
through, the jurors shall confer together at 
their pleasure, as they shall think most 
convenient, upon the truth of the issue 
before them, with as much deliberation 
and leisure as they can well desire; being 
all the while in tlie keeping of an officer of 
the court, in a place assigned them for 
that purpose, lest any one should attempt 
by indirect methods to influence them as 
to their opinion, which they are to give in 
to the court. Lastly, they are to return 
in to the court and certify the justices 
upon the truth of the issue so joined in 
the presence of the parties (if they please 
to he present), particularly the person who 
is plaintiff in the cause; what the jurors 
shall so certify, in the laws of England, is 
called the verdict; " (c. 2(51 

But personal knowledge of a case con- 
tinued to be allowed in a juror, who was 
even required to act upon it ; and it was 
not till a comparatively recent period that 
the complete separation of the functions 
of juryman and witness was established. 



400 ANGLO-NORMAN CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Pakt 1L 



PART II. 

THE ANGLO-NORMAN CONSTITUTION. 

§ 1. The Anglo-Norman Constitution. Causes of tlie Conquest. §2. Policy and 
Character of William. §3. His Tyranny. §4. Introduction of Feudal Services. 
§ o. Dirt'erence between the Feudal Governmeuts of France and England. Causes 
of the great Power of the first Norman Kings. § 0. Artiitrary Character of their 
Goverunient. § 7. Oeneral Taxes. § 8. Right of Legislation. Great Council. 
§ U. Laws Mild Charters of the Norman Kings. § 10. Resistance o: the Barons to 
."lohn. .^L^gMa Charta. Its principal Articles. § IL Constitution under Henry 
III. § IL'. Limitations of the Prerogative. § 13. Judicial System of the Anglo- 
Normans. Curia Regis, Exchequer, Justice of Assize, Common Pleas. § H. Es- 
tablishment of the Common Law. § 15. Hereditary Right of the Crown estab- 
lished. § 16. Remarks on the Limitation of Aristocratical Privileges in England. 

§ 1. It is deemed by William of Malmsbury an extraordi- 
nary work of Providence that the English should have given 
np all for lost after the battle of Hastings, where only a small 
though brave army had perished. It was, indeed, the conquest 
of a great kingdom by the prince of a single province — an 
event not easily paralleled, where the vanquished were little, 
if at all, less courageous than their enemies, and where no do- 
mestic factions exposed the country to an invader. Yet William 
Avas so advantageously situated that his success seems neither 
unaccountable nor any matter of discredit to the English 
nation. The heir of the house of Cedric had been already set 
aside at the election of Harold ; and his youth, joined to a 
mediocrity of understanding, which excited neither esteem nor 
fear, gave no cneouragement to the scheme of jolacing him 
upon the throne in those moments of imminent peril which 
followed the battle of Hastings. England Avas jjcculiarly des- 
titute of great men. The weak reigns of Ethelred and Edward 
had rendered the Government a mere oligarchy, and reduced 
the nobility into the state of retainers to a few leading houses, 
the representatives of which were every way unequal to meet 
such an enemy as the Duke of jSTormandy. If, indeed, the 
concurrent testimony of historians does not exaggerate his 
forces, it may be doubted whether England possessed military 
resources sufficient to have resisted so numerous and well- 
appointed an army. 

The forlorn state of the country induced, if it did not justify, 
the measure of tendering the crown to William, which he had 



English Const. WILLIAM L 401 

a pretext or title to claim, arising from the intentions, perhaps 
the promise, perhaps even the testament of Edward, which 
had more weiglit in those times than it deserved, and was at 
least better than the naked title of conquest. And this, sup- 
ported by an oath exactly similar to that taken by the Anglo- 
Saxon kings, and by the assent of the multitude, English as 
well as Normans, on the day of his coronation, gave as much 
appearance of a regular succession as the circumstances of the 
times would permit. Those who yielded to such circumstances 
could not foresee, and were unwilling to anticipate, the bitter- 
ness of that servitude which William and his Norman followers 
were to bring upon their country. 

§ 2. The commencement of his administration was tolerably 
equitable. Though many confiscations took place, in order to 
gratify the Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in 
the hands of its former possessors. Offices of high trust were 
bestowed upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family 
renown might have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, 
partly through the insolence and injustice of William's Norman 
vassals, partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man 
conscious of having overturned the national government, his 
yoke soon became more heavy. The English were oppressed ; 
they rebelled, were subdued, and oppressed again. All their 
risings were without concert, and desperate ; they wanted men 
fit to head them, and fortresses to sustain their revolt. After 
a very few years they sank in despair, and yielded for a cen- 
tury to the indignities of a comparatively small body of 
strangers without a single tumult. So possible is it for a 
nation to be kept in permanent servitude, even without losing 
its reputation for individual courage or its desire for freedom ! 

The tyranny of William displayed less of passion or inso- 
lence than of that indifference about human suffering which 
distinguishes a cold and far-sighted statesman. Impressed by 
the frequent risings of the English at the commencement of 
his reign, and by the recollection, as one historian observes, 
that the mild government of Canute had only ended in the 
expulsion of the Danish line, he formed the scheme of riveting 
such fetters upon the conquered nation, that all resistance 
should become impractical )le. Tliose who had obtained lionor- 
able offices were successively deprived of them ; even the 
bishops and abbots of English birth were deposed ;^ a stretch 

1 This was done with the concurrence and sanction of tlie pope, Alexander II., so 
that the stretcli of power was by Uonie rather than by William. It must pass for a 
gross violation of ecclesiastical as well as national rights, and Lanfranc cannot 
be reckoned, notwithstanding his distinguished name, as any better than an intrusive 



402 WILLIAM Chap. VIII. Part TI. 

of power very singular in that age. Morcar, one of the most 
illustrious English, suffered perpetual imprisonment. Wal- 
theoff, a man of equally conspicuous birth, lost his head upon 
the scaffold by a very harsh, if not iniquitous sentence. It was 
so rare in those times to inflict judicially any capital punishment 
upon persons of such rank, that his death seems to have pro- 
duced more indignation and despair in England than any 
single circumstance. The name of Englishman was turned 
into a reproach. None of that race for a hundred years were 
raised to any dignity in the State or Church.^ Several English 
nobles, desperate of the fortunes of their country, sought 
refuge in the Court of Constantinople, and approved their 
valor in the wars of Alexius against another Norman conqueror, 
scarcely less celebrated than their own, E-obert Guiscard. 
Under the name of Varangians, those true and faithful sup- 
porters of the Byzantine Empire preserved to its dissolution 
their ancient Saxon idiom. ^ 

An extensive spoliation of property accompanied these rev- 
olutions. It appears by the great national survey of Dooms- 
day-book, completed near the close of the Conqueror's reign, 
that the tenants in capite of the crown were generally foreign- 
ers. Undoubtedly there were a few left in almost every county 
who still enjoyed the estates which they held under Edward 
the Confessor, free from any superiority but that of the crown, 
and were denominated, as in former times, the king's thanes. 
Cospatric, son, perhaps, of one of that name who had possessed 
the earldom of Northumberland, held forty-one manors in 
Yorkshire, though many of them are stated in Doomsday to be 
waste. But inferior freeholders were much less disturbed in 
their estates than the higher class. It is manifest, by running 
the eye over some pages of the list of mesne tenants at the 
time of the survey, how mistaken is the supposition that few 
of English birth held entire manors. They form a large pro- 
bishop. Hp sliowcd his arrogant scorn of the English nation in another and rather a 
singular manner. They were e.xcessively proud of their national saints, some of 
whom were little known, and whose barbarous names disgusted Italian ears. The 
Norman bishops, and the primate especially, set themselves to disparage, and in 
fact to disposses.s, St. Aldhelm, St. Eltig, and, for anght we know, St. Swithin, St. 
Werburg, St. Ebb, and St. Alphage; names, it must be owned, 

" That would have made Quintillian .stare and gasp." 
We may judge what the eminent native of I'avia tliought of such a hagiology. The 
English Cliurch found herself, as it were, with an attainted peerage. IJut the calen- 
dar withstood these innovations. 

- Becket is said to have been the first Englishm.an who reached any considerable 
dignity. 

3 No writer, except perhaps the Saxon Chronicle, is so full of William's tyranny 
as Ordericus Vitalis. r)rdericu> was an Englishman, but passed at ten years old, a.d. 
1084, into Normandy, where he became professed inthe monastery of Eu. 



English Const. HIS CHARACTER. 403 

portion of nearly 8000 mesne tenants. And we may presume 
that they were in a very much greater proportion among tlie 
"liberi homines," who held lands, subject only to free services, 
seldom or never very burdensome. It may be added that 
many Normans, as we learn from liistory, married English 
heiresses, rendered so, frequently, no doubt, by the violent 
deaths of their fathers and brothers, but still transmitting 
ancient rights, as well as native blood, to their jDosterity. 

This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spolia- 
tion must appear in modern times, and almost completely as 
the nation was excluded from civil power in the Common- 
wealth, there is some exaggeration in the language of those 
writers who represent them as universally reduced to a state 
of penury and servitude. But, whatever may have been the 
legal condition of the English mesne tenant, by knight-ser- 
vice or socage — for the case of villeins is of course not here 
considered during the first two Norman reigns — it seems evi- 
dent that he was protected by the charter of Henry I. in the 
hereditary possession of his lands, subject only to a " laAvful 
and just relief towards his lord ; " for this charter is addressed 
to all the liege men of the crown, " French and English," and 
purports to aljolish all the evil customs by which the kingdom 
had been oppressed, extending to the tenants of the barons as 
well as those of the crown. 

The vast extent of the Norman estates in capite is apt to de- 
ceive us. In reading of a baron who held forty or fifty or one 
hundred manors, we are prone to fancy his wealth something 
like what a similar estate would produce at this day. But if 
we look at the next words, we shall continually find that some 
one else held of him ; and this was a holding by knight's ser- 
vice, subject to feudal incidents, no doubt, but not leaving the 
seigniory very lucrative, or giving any right of possessory 
ownership over the land. The real possessions of the tenant 
of a manor, whether holding in chief or not, consisted in the 
demesne lands, the produce of which he obtained without cost 
by the labor of the villeins, and in whatever other payments 
they might be bound to make in money or kind. It will be re- 
membered, what has been more than once inculcated, that at 
this time the villani and bordarii, that is, ceorls, were not, like 
the villeins of a later time, destitute of rights in their prop- 
erty ; their condition was tending to the lower stage, and, with 
a Norman lord, they were in much danger of oppression ; but 
they were " law-worthy " — they had a civil status (to pass 
from one technical style to another) for a century after the 
Conquest. 



404 WILLIAM I. Chap. VIII. Pakt II. 

Yet I would not extenuate the calamities of this great rev- 
olution, true though it be that mueli good was brought out of 
them, and that we owe no trifling part of what inspires self- 
esteem to the IS'orman element of our population and our 
polity. England passed under the yoke — she endured the ar- 
rogance of foreign conquerors — her children, even though 
their loss in revenue may have been exaggerated, and still it 
was enormous, became a low race, not called to the councils of 
their sovereign, not sharing his trust or his bounty. They 
were in a far different condition from the provincial Romans 
after the conquest of Gaul, even if, which is hardly possible to 
determine, their actual deprivation of lands should have been 
less extensive. For not only they did not for several reigns 
occu])y the honorable stations which sometimes fell to the lot 
of the Roman subject of Clovis or Alaric, but they had a great 
deal more freedom and importance to lose. Nor had they a 
protecting Church to mitigate barbarous superiority ; their 
bishops were degraded and in exile ; the footstep of the invader 
was at their altars ; their monasteries were plundered, and the 
native monks insulted. Rome herself looked with little favor 
on a Church which had preserved some measure of independ- 
ence : strange contrast to the triumphant episcopate of the 
Merovingian kings ! * 

§ 3. Besides the severities exercised upcm the English after 
every insurrection, two instances of William's unsparing cru- 
elty are well know — the devastation of Yorkshire and of the 
New Forest. In the former, which had the tyrant's plea, 
necessity, for its pretext, an invasion being threatened from 
Denmark, the whole country between the Tyne and the Hum- 
ber was laid so desolate that for nine years afterwards there 
was not an inhabited village, and hardly an inhabitant left — 
the wasting of this district haviug been followed by a famine 
which swept away the whole popidation. That of the New 
Forest, though undoubtedly less calamitous in its effects, 
seems more monstrous from the frivolousness of the cause. 
He afforested several other tracts. And these favorite de- 
mesnes of the Norman kings were protected by a system 
of iniquitous and cruel I'egulations, called the Forest Laws, 
wliich it became afterwards a great object with tlie asserters 
of liberty to correct. The penalty for killing a stag or a boar 
was loss of eyes ; for William loved the great game, says the 
Saxon Chronicle, as if he had been their father. 

* The oppression of the English during the first reigns after the Conquest is fully 
described by the Norman historians themselves, as well as by the Saxon Chronicle. 
Their testimonies are well collected by M. Thierry in the second volume of his val- 
uable history. 



English Const. HIS TYRANNY. 405 

A more general proof of the ruinous oppression of William 
the Conqueror may be deduced from the comparative condition 
of the English towns in the reign of Edward the Confessor 
and at the compilation of Doomsday. At the former epoch, 
there w^ere in York 1GU7 inhabited houses ; at the latter, 967 : 
at the former, there were in Oxford 721 ; at the latter, 243 : of 
172 houses in Dorchester, 100 were destroyed ; of 243 in Derby, 
103 ; of 487 in Chester, 205. Some other towns had suffered 
less, but scarcely any one fails to exhibit marks of a decayed 
population.^ 

The demesne lands of the crown, extensive and scattered 
over every county, were abundantly sufficient to support its 
dignity and magnificence ; ^ and William, far from wasting 
this revenue by prodigal grants, took care to let them at tlie 
highest rate to farm, little caring how much the cultivators 
were racked by his tenants. Yet his exactions, both feudal 
and in the way of tallage, from his burgesses and the tenants 
of his vassals, were almost as violent as his confiscations. No 
source of income was neglected by him, or, indeed, by his suc- 
cessors, however trifling, unjust, or unreasonable. His reve- 
nues, if we could trust Ordericus Vitalis, amounted to £1000 
a day. This, in mere weight of silver, would be equal to 
nearly £1,200,000 a year at present. But the arithmetical 
statements of these writers are not implicitly to be relied 
upon. He left at his death a treasure of £60,000, which, in 
conformity, to his dying request, his successor distributed 
among the Church and poor of the kingdom, as a feeble ex- 
piation of the crimes by which it had been accumulated ; an 
act of disinterestedness which seems to prove that llufus, 
amidst all his vices, was not destitute of better feelings than 
historians have ascribed to him. It might appear that Wil- 
liam had little use for his extorted wealth. By the feudal 
constitution, as established during his reign, he commanded 
the service of a vast army at its own expense, either for do- 
mestic or Continental warfare. But this was not sufficient 
for his purpose; like other tyrants, he put greater trust in 
mercenary obedience. Some of his predecessors had kept 
bodies of Danish troops in pay ; partly to be secure against 
their hostility, partly from the convenience of a regular army, 
and the love which princes bear to it. But William carried 
this to a much greater lengtli. He had always stipendiary 

6 The population recorded in Doomsday is about 283,000; which, in round num- 
bers, .allowing for women and children, may be called about a million. 
6 They consisted of H22 manors. 



406 FEUDAL SERVICES. Chap. VIII. Part II. 

soldiers at his command. Indeed, his army at the Conquest 
could not have been swollen to such numbers by any other 
means. They were drawn, by the allurement of high pay, 
not from France and Brittany alone, but Flanders, Germany, 
and even Spain. When Canute of Denmark threatened an in- 
vasion in 1085, William, too conscious of his own tyranny to 
use the arms of his English subjects, collected a mercenary 
force so vast, that men wondered, says the Saxon Chronicle, 
how the country could maintain it. This he quartered upon 
the people, according to the proportion of their estates. 

§ 4. Whatever may be thought of the Anglo-Saxon tenures, 
it is certain that those of the feudal system were thoroughly 
established in England under the Conqueror. It has been ob- 
served, in another part of this work, that the rights, or feudal 
incidents, of wardship and marriage were more, common in 
England and Kormandy than in the rest of France. They 
certainly did not exist in the former before the Conquest ; but 
wliether they were ancient customs of the latter cannot be 
ascertained, unless we had more incontestable records of its 
early jurisprudence. There appears, however, reason to think 
that the seizure of the lands in wardship, the selling of the 
heiress in marriage, were originally deemed rather acts of 
violence than conformable to law. For Henry I.'s charter 
expressly promises that the mother, or next of kin, shall have 
the custody of the lands as well as person of the heir. And 
as the charter of Henry II. refers to and confirms that of his 
grandfather, it seems to follow that what is called guardianship 
in chivalry had not yet been established. At least it is not 
till the assize of Clarendon, confirmed at Northampton in 1176, 
that the custody of the heir is clearly reserved to the lord. 
With respect to the right of consenting to the marriage of a 
female vassal, it seems to have been, as I have elsewliere ob- 
served, pretty general in feudal tenures. But the sale of her 
person in marriage, or the exaction of a sum of money in lieu 
of this scandalous tyranny, was only the law of England, and 
was not, perhaps, fully authorized as such till the statute of 
Merton, in 1236. 

One innovation made by William upon the feudal law is 
very deserving of attention. By the leading principle of feuds, 
an oath of fealty Avas due from the vassal to the lord of wliom 
he immediately held his land, and to no other. The King of 
France, long after this period, had no feu.dal, and scarcely any 
royal authority over the tenants of his own vassals. But 
William received at Salisbury, in 1085, the fealty of all land- 



English Const. FEUDAL SERVICES. 407 

holders in England, both those who held in chief and their 
tenants ; thus breaking in upon the feudal compact in its 
most essential attribute, the exclusive dependence of a vassal 
upon his lord. And this may be reckoned among the several 
causes which prevented the Continental notions of independ- 
ence upon the crown from ever taking root among the English 
aristocracy. 

§ 5. The system of feudal policy, though derived to Eng- 
land from a French source, bore a very different appearance 
in the two countries. France, for about two centuries after 
the house of Capet had usurped the throne of Charlemagne's 
posterity, could hardly be deemed a regular confederacy, nuich 
less an entire monarciiy. But m England a government feudal, 
indeed, in its form, but arbitrary in its exercise, not only 
maintained . subordination, but almost extinguished liberty. 
Several causes seem to have conspired towards this radical 
difference. In the first place, a kingdom comparatively small 
is much more easily kept under control than one of vast 
extent. And the fiefs of Anglo-Norman barons after the Con- 
quest were far less considerable, even relatively to the size of 
the two countries, than those of France. The Earl of Chester 
held, indeed, almost all that county ; "^ the Earl of Shrews- 
bury nearly the whole of Salop. But these domains bore no 
comparison with the dukedom of Guienne, or the county of 
Toulouse. In general, the lordships of William's barons, 
whether this were owing to policy or accident, were exceed- 
ingly dispersed. Eobert, Earl of Moreton, for example, the 
most richly endowed of his followers, enjoyed 248 manors in 
Cornwall, 54 in Sussex, 196 in Yorkshire, 99 in Northampton- 
shire, besides many in other counties. Estates so disjoined, 
however immense in their aggregate, were ill calculated for 
supporting a rebellion. It is observed by Madox that the 
knight's fees of almost every barony were scattered over 
various counties. 

In the next place, these baronial fiefs were held under an 
actual derivation from the crown. The great vassals of 
France had usurped their dominions before the accession of 
Hugh Capet, and barely submitted to his nominal sovereignty. 

7 This was, upon the whole, more like :i great French fief tlian nny English earl- 
dom. Hugh de Abrincis, nephew of William I., had barons of his own, cue of whom 
held forty-six and another thirty manors. Chester was first called a county-palatine 
under Henry II.; but it previously possessed all regalian rights of jurisdiction. Al- 
ter the forfeitures of the house of Jlontgomery, it acquired all the country between 
the Mersey and Ribble. Several eminent men inherited the earldom; but upon the 
death of the most distinguished, Ranulf, in l'-!.TJ, it fell into a female line, and soon 
escheated to the crown. 



408 THE NOKMAN KINGS. Chap. VIII. Part II. 

They uever intended to yield the feudal tril)utes of relief and 
aid, nor did some of them even acknowledge the supremacy 
of his royal jurisdiction. But the Conqueror and his succes- 
sors imposed what conditions they would upon a set of barons 
who owed all to their grants ; and as mankind's notions of 
right are generally founded upon prescriptions, these peers 
grew accustomed to endure many burdens, reluctantly indeed, 
but without that feeling of injury which would have resisted 
an attempt to impose them upon the vassals of tlie French 
crown. For the same reasons the barons of England were 
regularly summoned to the great council ; and by their attend- 
ance in it, and concurrence in the measures which were there 
resolved upon, a compactness and unity of interests was 
given to the monarchy which was entirely wanting in that of 
France. 

We may add to the circumstances that rendered tlie crown 
powerful during the first century after the Conquest, an ex- 
treme antipathy of the native English towards their invaders. 
l>()th William Rufus and Henry I. made use of the former to 
strengthen themselves against the attempts of their brother 
Kobert, though they forgot their promises to the English after 
attaining their object. A fact mentioned by Ordericus Vitalis 
illustrates the advantage which the government found in this 
national animosity. During the siege of Bridgenorth, a town 
belonging to Robert de Belesme, one of the most turbulent 
and powerful of the Norman barons, by Henry I. in 1102, the 
rest of the nobility deliberated together, and came to the con- 
clusion that if the king could expel so distinguished a subject 
he would be able to treat them all as his servants. They 
endeavored, therefore, to bring about a treaty ; but the Eng- 
lish part of Henry's army, hating Robert de Belesme as a 
Norman, urged the king to proceed with the siege, which he 
did, and took the castle. 

§ 6. Unrestrained, therefore, comparatively spenking, by the 
aristocratic principles which influenced other feudal countries, 
the administration acquired a tone of rigor and arbitrariness 
under William the Conqueror Avhich, though sometimes per- 
haps a little mitigated, did not cease during a century and a 
half. For the first three reigns we must have recourse to 
historians whose language, though vague, and perhaps exagger- 
ated, is too uniform and impressive to leave a doubt of the 
tyrannical character of the government. The intolerable 
exactions of tribute, the rapine of purveyance, the iniquity of 
royal courts, are continually in their mouths. " God sees the 



English Const. GOVERNMENT OF NORMAN KINGS. 409 

wretched people," says the Saxon chronicler, " most unjustly 
oppressed ; first they are despoiled of their possessions, then 
butchered. This Avas a grievous year (1124). Whoever had 
any property lost it by heavy taxes and unjust decrees." The 
same ancient chronicle, which a})pears to have been continued 
from time to time in the Abbey of Peterborough, frequently 
utters similar notes of lamentation. 

From the reign of Stephen, the miseries of which are not to 
my immediate purpose, so far as they proceeded from anarchy 
and intestine war,** we are able to trace the character of gov- 
ernment by existing records.^ These, digested by the industri- 
ous Madox into his History of the Exchequer, give us far more 
insight into the spirit of the constitution, if we may use such 
a word, than all our monkish clironicles. It was not a sanguin- 
ary despotism. Henry II. was a piince of remarkable clem- 
ency ; and none of the Conqueror's successors were as grossly 
tyrannical as himself. But the system of rapacious extortion 
from their subjects prevailed to a degree which we should 
rather expect to find among Eastern slaves than tliat high-spir- 
ited race of Normandy whose renown then filled Europe and 
Asia. The right of wardshij) was abused by selling the heir and 
his land to the highest bidder. That of marriage was carried 
to a still grosser excess. The kings of France, indeed, claimed 
the prerogative of forbidding the marriage of their vassals' 
daughters to such persons as they thought unfriendly or dan- 
gerous to themselves ; but I am not aware that they ever com- 
pelled them to marry, much less that they turned this attribute 
of sovereignty into a means of revenue. But in England, 
women, and even men, simply as tenants-in-chief, and not as 
wards, fined to the crown for leave to marry whom they would, 
or not to be compelled to marry any other. Towns not only 
fined for original grants of franchises, but for repeated confir- 
mations. The Jews paid exorl)itant sums for every common right 
of mankind, for protection, for justice. In return they were 
sustained against their Christian debtors in demands of usury 

8 Tlie following simple picture of that reisrii from the Saxon Chronicle may be 
worth inserting: " The nobles and bishops built castles, and lilled them witli devil- 
ish and wiclved men, and opjiressed tlie people, cruelly torturing men for tlieir money. 
They imposed taxes upon towns, and, when they had exhausted them of every tiling, 
set them on fire. You might travel a day and not find one man living in a town, nor 
any land in cultivation. Never did the country sufTer greater evils. If two or tliree 
men were seen riding up to a town, all its inhabitants left it, taking them for plun- 
derers. And tills lasted, growing worse and worse, throughout Stephen's reign. Men 
said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep" (p. 2'A9). 

'•> The earliest record in the Pipe-office is tliat which Madox, in conformity to a 
usage of others, cites by the name of IMagiium Rotulum quinto Stephani. But in 
a particular dissertation subjoined to his History of the Exchequer he inclines, though 
not decisively, to refer this record to the reigii of Henry I. 



410 GENERAL TAXES. Chap. VIU. 1'akt II. 

which superstition and tyranny reudered enormous. Men fined 
for the king's good-will ; or that he would remit his anger ; or 
to have his media-ti(jn with their adversaries. Many fines 
seem, as it w^ere, imposed in sport, if we look to the cause; 
though their extent, and the solemnity with which they were 
recorded, prove the humor to have been differently relished by 
the two parties. Thus the Bishop of Winchester paid a tun of 
good wine for not reminding the king (John) to give a girdle 
to the Countess of Albemarle ; and Robert de Vaux five best 
palfreys, tiiat the same king might hold his peace about Henry 
Pinel's wife. Another paid four marks for leave to eat (pro 
licentia comedendi). But of all the abuses which deformed 
the Anglo-Norman government, none was so flagitious as the 
sale of judicial redress. The king, we are often told, is the 
fountain of justice ; but in those ages it was one which gold 
alone could unseal. Men fined to have right done them ; to 
sue in a certain court ; to implead a certain person ; to have 
restitution of land which they had recovered at law. From 
the sale of that justice which every citizen has a right to de- 
mand, it was an easy transition to withhold or deny it. Fines 
were received for the king's help against the adverse suitor ; 
that is, for perversion of justice, or for delay. Sometimes they 
were paid b}^ opposite parties, and, of course, for opposite ends. 
These were called counter-fines. -^^ 

§ 7. Among a people imperfectly civilized the most out- 
rageous injustice towards individuals may pass without the 
slightest notice, while in matters affecting the community the 
powers of government are exceedingly controlled. It becomes, 
therefore, an important question what prerogative these Nor- 
man kings were used to exercise in raising money and in gen- 
eral legislation. By the prevailing feuclal customs the lord 
was entitled to demand pecuniary aid of his vassals in certain 
cases. These were, in England, to make his eldest son a knight, 
to marry his eldest daughter, and to ransom himself from 
captivity. Accordingly, when such circumstances occurred, 
aids were levied by the crown u])on its tenants, at the rate of 
a mark or a pound for every knight's fee.^-' These aids, being 
stdctly due in the prescribed cases, were taken without requir- 
ing tiie consent of Parliament. Escuage, which was a commu- 

1" The most oppoi5ite instances of these exactions are well selected from Madoxby 
Hume, Appendix II. 

" The reasonable aid was fixed by the st.atute of Westminster 1, 3 Edw. I., c. 36, 
at twenty shillings for every knijjlit's fee, and as much for every £l!0 value of laud 
held by socage. The aid pour faire Htz chevalier might be raised when he entered 
into his tifteeutli year; pour lille marier wheu she reached the age of seven. 



English Const. LEGISLATlOISr. 411 

tation for the personal service of military tenants in war, 
having ratlier tlie appearance of an indulgence than an imposi- 
tion, might reasonably be levied by the king. It was not till 
the charter of John that escuage became a parliamentary as- 
sessment ; the custom of commuting service having then grown 
general, and the rate of commutation being variable. 

None but military tenants could be liable for escuage ; but 
the inferior subjects of tlie crown were oppressed by tallages. 
The demesne lands of the king, and all royal towns, were lia- 
ble to tallage ; an imposition far more rigorous and irregular 
than those which fell upon the gentry. Tallages were con- 
tinually raised upon different towns during all the Norman 
reigns without the consent of Parliament, which neither rep- 
resented them nor cared for their interests. The itinerant 
justices in their circuit usually set this tax. Sometimes the 
tallage was assessed in gross upon a town, and collected by 
the burgesses; sometimes individually at the judgment of the 
justices. There was an apjieal from an excessive assessment 
to the barons of the Exchequer. Inferior lords miglit tallage 
their own tenants and demesne towns, though not, it seems, 
without the king's permission. Customs upon the import and 
export of merchandise, of which the prisage of wine — that is, 
a right of taking two casks out of each vessel — seems the 
most material, were imraemorially exacted by the crown. 
There is no appearance that these originated with Parliament. 
Another tax, extending to all the lands of the kingdom, was 
Danegeld, the ship-money of those times. This name had 
been originally given to the tax imposed under Ethelred II., 
in order to raise a tribute exacted by the Danes. It was after- 
wards applied to a permanent contribution for the public de- 
fence against the same enemies. But after the Conquest this 
tax is said to have been only occasionally required ; and the 
latest instance on record of its payment is in the 20th of 
Henry II. Its imposition appears to have been at the king's 
discretion. 

§ 8. The right of general legislation was undoubtedly 
placed in the king, conjointly with his Great Council, or, if 
the expression be thought more proper, with their advice. So 
little opposition was found in these assemblies by the early 
Norman kings, that they gratified their own love of pomp, as 
well as the pride of their barons, by consulting them in every 
important business. But the limits of legislative power were 
extremely indefinite. ^^ New laws, like new taxes, affecting 

'2 See Note I., " The Legislation of the Great Council." 



412 CHARTERS. Chap. Vill. PAiix 11. 

the community, required tlie sanction of that assembly which 
was supposed to represent it ; but tliere was no security for 
individuals against acts of prerogative which we should justly 
consider as most tyrannical. Henry II., the best of these 
mouarchs, banished from England the relations and friends of 
Becket, to the number of four hundred. At another time he 
sent over from Normandy an injunction that all the kindred 
of those who obeyed a papal interdict should be banished and 
their estates conhscated. 

§ 9. The statutes of those reigns do not exhibit to us many 
provisions calculated to maintain public liberty on a broad and 
general foundation. And although the laws then enacted 
have not all been preserved, yet it is unlikely that any of an 
extensively remedial nature should have left no trace of their 
existence. We find, however, what has sometimes been called 
the Magna Charta of Williain the Conqueror. " We will, en- 
join, and grant," says the king, " that all freemen of our king- 
dom shall enjoy their lands in peace, free from all tallage, and 
from every unjust exaction, so that nothing but their service 
lawfully due to us shall be demanded at their hands." ^^ It is 
remarkable that no reference is made to this concession of 
William the Conqueror in any subsequent charter. A charter 
of Henry I., the authenticity of which is undisputed, though 
it contains notliing specially expressed but a remission of un- 
reasonable reliefs, wardships, and other feudal burdens," pro- 
ceeds to declare that he gives his subjects the laws of Edward 
the Confessor, with the emendations made by his father with 
consent of his barons. The charter of Stephen not only con- 
firms that of his predecessor, but adds, in fuller terms than 
Henry had used, an express concession of the laws and cus- 
toms of Edward. Henry II. is silent about these, although he 
repeats the confirmation of his grandfather's charter. The 
people, however, had begun to look back to a more ancient 
standard of law. The Norman Conquest, and all that ensued 

" This charter contains a clause — " Hoc quoque prsecipio et volo ut omnes liab- 
eaiit et teiieant legem Echvardi Regis in omnibus rebus, adauctis his quse constitui 
ad utilitatem populi Aiiglorum." This cliarter seems to be fully establislied; it de- 
serves to be accounted the first remedial concession by the crown; for it indicates, 
especially taken in connection with the public Iiistory, an arbitrary exercise of royal 
power which neither the new nor the old subjects of "the English monarchy reckoned 
lawful. It is also the earliest recognition of the Anglo-Saxon laws, such as they sub- 
sisted under the Confessor, and a proof both that the English were now endeavoring 
to raise their heads from servitude, and that the Normans had discovered some im- 
munities from taxation, or some securities from absolute power, among the con- 
quered people, in which they desired to participate. 

'* Ihe accession of Henry inspired hopes into the English nation," which were not 
well nalized. His marriage with Matilda, "of the rightful English kin" is men- 
tioned with apparent pleasure by the Saxon chronicler under the year 1100. 



English Const. CHAKTEKS. 413 

upon it, had endeared the memory of their Saxon government. 
Its disorders were forgotten, or, ratlier, were less odious to a 
rude nation than the coercive justice by which tliey were after- 
wards restrained. Hence it became the favorite cry to demand 
the laws of Edward the Confessor ; and the Normans tiiem 
selves, as they grew dissatisfied with the royal administration, 
fell into these English sentiments. ^^ But what these laws 
were, or more properly, perhaps, these customs subsisting in 
the Confessor's age, was not very distinctly understood. So 
far, however, was clear, that the rigorous feudal servitude, the 
weighty tributes upon poorer freemen, had never prevailed be- 
fore the Conquest. In claiming the laws of Edward the Con- 
fessor, our ancestors meant but the redress of grievances 
whicli tradition told them had not always existed. 

It is highly probable, independently of the evidence sup- 
j)lie(l by the charters of Henry I. and his two successors, that 
a sense of oppression had long been stimulating the subjects 
of so arbitrary a government before they gave any demonstra- 
tions of it sufficiently palpable to find a place in history. But 
there are certainly no instances of rebellion, or even, as far as 
we know, of a constitutional resistance in Parliament, down to 
the reign of Richard I. The revolt of the earls of Leicester 
and Norfolk against Henry II., which endangered his throne 
and comprehended his children with a large part of his barons, 
appears not to have been founded even upon the pretext of 
public grievances. Under Richard I. something more of a 
national spirit began to show itself. For the king having left 
his chancellor, William Longchamp, joint regent and justiciary 
with the Bishop of Durham during his crusade, the foolish in- 
solence of the former, who excluded his coadjutor from any 
share in the administration, provoked every one of the nobil- 
ity. A convention of these, the king's brother placing himself 
at their head, passed a sentence of removal and banishment 
upon the chancellor. Though there might be reason to con- 
ceive that this would not be unpleasing to tlie king, who was 
already apprised how much Longchamp had abused his trust, 
it was a remarkable assumption of power by that assembly, 

1'' Tlie distinction between tlie two nations was pretty well obliterated at the end 
of Henry II. 's reign, as we learn from the Dialogue on the Exchequer, then writtin : 
Jam cohabitantibus Anglicis et Normannis, et alterutrdm uxores ducentibus vel iiu- 
bentibus, sic permixtae sunt nationes, ut vix discerni possit liodie, de liberis loquor, 
quis Anglicus, quis Normaiinns sit genero; exccptis dnntaxat ascriptitiis qui villani 
dicuntnr, quibus nmi est libcrum obstantibus doniinis suis a sui status conditione 
discedere. Kapropter pene quicunque sic liodie occisus reperitur, ut murdrum puni- 
tur, exceptis his quibus certa sunt nt diximus servilis conditionis indicia (p. 26). See 
Note II., " On the Duration of Distinction between Aornian and Saxon." 



414 KING JOHN. Chap. VIII. Pakt II. 

and the earliest authority for a leading principle of our con- 
stitution, the responsibility of ministers to Parliament. 

§ 10 In the succeeding reign of John all the rapacious ex- 
actions usual to these Norman kings were not only redoubled, 
but mingled with other outrages of tyranny still more intoler- 
able. These, too, were to be endured at the hands of a prince 
utterly contemptible for his folly and cowardice. One is sur- 
prised at tlie forbearance displayed by the barons, till they 
took up arms at length in that confederacy which ended in 
establishing the Great Charter of Liberties. As this Avas the 
first effort towards a legal government, so is it beyond com- 
parison the most important event in our history, except that 
Revolution without Avhich its benefits would have been rapidly 
annihilated. The constitution of England has indeed no single 
date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institu- 
tions of positive law, the far more important changes which 
time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred 
years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly les- 
sened its direct application to our present circumstances. But 
it is still the key-stone of English liberty. All that has since 
been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commen- 
tary ; and if every subsequent law were to be swept away, 
there would still remain the bold features that distinguish a 
free from a despotic monarchy. It has been lately the fashion 
to depreciate the value of Magna Charta, as if it had sprung 
from the private ambition of a few selfish barons, and redressed 
only some feudal abuses. It is indeed of little importance by 
what motives those who obtained it were guided. The real 
characters of men most distinguished in the transactions of 
that time are not easily determined at present. Yet if we 
bring these ungrateful suspicions to the test, they prove desti- 
tute of all reasonable foundation. An equal distribution of 
civil rights to all classes of freemen forms the peculiar beauty 
of the charter. In this just solicitude for the people, and in 
the moderation which infringed upon no essential prerogative 
of the monarchy, we may perceive a liberality and patriotism 
very unlike the selfishness which is sometimes rashly imputed 
to those ancient barons. And, as far as we are guided by his- 
torical testimony, two great men, the pillars of our Church and 
State, may be considered as entitled beyond the rest to the 
glory of this moment — Ste])Jien Langton, archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and William, earl of Pembroke. To .their temperate 
zeal for a legal government, England was indebted during that 
critical period for the two greatest blessings that patriotic 



English Const. MAGNA CHARTA 415 

statesmen could confer — the establishment of civil liberty 
upon an immovable basis, and the preservation of national in- 
dependence under the ancient line of sovereigns, which rasher 
men were about to exchange for the dominion of France. 

By the Magna Charta of John reliefs were limited to a cer- 
tain sum according to the rank of the tenant, the waste com- 
mitted by guardians in chivalry restrained, the disparagement 
in matrimony of female wards forbidden, and widows secured 
from compulsory marriage. These regulations, extending to 
the sub-vassals of the crown, redressed the worst grievances of 
every military tenant in England. The franchises of the city 
of London and of all towns and boroughs were declared in- 
violable. The freedom of commerce was guaranteed to alien 
merchants. The Court of Common Pleas, instead of following 
the king's person, was fixed at Westminster. The tyranny 
exercised in the neighborhood of royal forests met with some 
check, which was further enforced by the Charter of Forests 
under Henry III. 

But the essential clauses of Magna Charta are those which 
protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by 
giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary 
spoliation. "No freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry 
III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in preference 
to that of John, the variations not being very material) shall 
be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold, or 
liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any 
otherwise destroyed ; nor will we pass upon him, nor send 
upon him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law 
of the land.^^ We Avill sell to no man, we will not deny or 
delay to any man, justice or right." It is obvious that these 
words, interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an 
ample security for the two main riglits of civil society. From 
the era, therefore, of King John's charter, it jnust have been a 

16 Nisi per legale. judicium pariiini suoium.re^ per legem terr». Several explana- 
tions have been offered of the alternative clause, which some have referred tu judg- 
ment by default or demurrer — others to the process of attachment for contempt. 
Certainly there are numy legal procedures besides trial by jury, through which n 
party's goods or person may "be taken. Hut one may doubt whether these were in 
contemplation of the franiers of Magna Charta. In an entry of the charter of 1217 by 
a contemporary haiul, preserved in a book in the town-clerk's office in London, called 
Liber Custumarum et Kegum antiquoruiii, a various reading, ei per legem terra\ 
occurs. — Blackstone's Charters, p. 42. And the word we/ is so frequently used for et, 
that I am not wholly free from a suspicion that it was so intended in this place. Tlie 
meaning will be that no person shall be disseized, etc., except upon a lawful cause of 
action or indictment found by the verdict of a jury. This really seems as good as any 
of the disjunctive interpretations, but I do not offer it with much confidence. 

But ])erliaps the best sense of the disjunctive will be perceived by remembering 
that judicium parium was generally opposed to the combat or the ordeaJ, which were 
equally lex ierree. The Magna Charta is printed at length on p. oii seq. 



416 MAGNA CHARTA. Chap. VIII. Part II. 

clear principle of our constitution that no man can be detained 
in prison without trial. Whether courts of justice framed the 
writ of Habeas Corpus in conformity to the spirit of t'.is 
clause, or found it already in their register, it became from 
tliat era the right of every subject to demand it. That writ, 
rendered more actively remedial by the statute of Charles II., 
but founded upon the broad basis of Magna Charta, is the 
principal bulwark of English liberty ; and if ever temporary 
circumstances, or the doubtful plea of political necessity, shall 
lead men to look on its denial with apathy, the most distin- 
guishing characteristic of our constitution will be effaced. 

A.S the clause recited above protects the subject from any 
absolute spoliation of his freehold rights, so others restrain the 
excessive amercements which had an almost equally ruinous 
operation. The magnitude of his offence, by the 14tli clause 
of Henry III.'s charter, must be the measure of his fine ; and 
in every case the contenement (a word expressive of chattels 
necessary to each man's station, as the arms of a gentleman, 
the mercliandise of a trader, the plough and wagons of a 
peasant) was exempted from seizure. A provision was made 
in the charter of John tliat no aid or escuage should be im- 
posed, excejit in the three feudal cases of aid, without consent 
of Parliaiuont. And this was extended to aids paid by the 
city of London. But the clause was omitted in the three 
charters granted by Henry III., though rarliament seem to 
have acted upon it in most part of his reign. It had, however, 
no reference to tallages imposed upon towns without their 
consent. Fourscore years were yet to elapse before the great 
principle of parliamentary taxation was explicitly and abso- 
lutely recognized. 

§ 11. From this era a new soul was infused into the people 
of England. Her liberties, at the best long in abeyance, be- 
came a tangible possession, and those indefinite aspirations for 
the laws of Edward the Confessor were changed into a steady 
regard for the Great Charter. Pass but from the history of 
Roger de Hoveden to that of Matthew Paris, from the second 
Henry to the third, and judge whether the victorious struggle 
had not excited an energy of public spirit to which the nation 
was before a stranger. The strong man, in the sublime lan- 
guage of Milton, was aroused from sleep, and shook his in- 
vincible locks. Tyranny, indeed, and injustice will, by all 
historians not absolutely servile, be noted with moral reproba- 
tion ; but never shall we find in the English writers of the 
twelfth century that assertion of positive and national rights 



English Const. MAGNA CHARTA. 417 

which distinguishes those of the next age, and particularly 
the monk of St. Alban's. From his prolix history we may 
collect three material propositions as to the state of the Eng- 
lish constitution during the long reign of Henry III. ; a prince 
to whom the epithet of worthless seems best applicable ; and 
who, without committing any flagrant crimes, was at once in- 
sincere, ill-judging, and pusillanimous. The intervention of 
such a reign was a very fortunate circumstance for public 
liberty, which might possibly have been crushed in its infancy 
if an Edward had immediately succeeded to the throne of 
John. 

1. The Great Charter was always considered as a funda- 
mental law. But yet it was supposed to acquire additional 
security by frequent confirmation. This it receives, with 
some not inconsiderable variation, in the first, second and 
ninth years of Henry's reign. The last of these is in our 
present statute-book, and has never received any alterations ; 
but Sir E. Coke reckons thirty-two instances wherein it has 
been solemnly ratified. Several of these were during the 
reign of Henry III., and were invariably purchased by the 
grant of a subsidy. This prudent accommodation of Parlia- 
ment to the circumstances of their age not only made the 
law itself appear more inviolable, but established that corre- 
spondence between supply and redress which for some centu- 
ries was the balance-spring of our constitution. Tlie charter, 
indeed, was often grossly violated by their administration. 
Even Hul)ert de Burgh, of whom history speaks more favor- 
ably than of Henry's later favorites, though a faithful servant 
of the crown, seems, as is too often the case with sucli men, 
to have thought the king's honor and interest concerned in 
maintaining an unlimited prerogative. The government was, 
however, much worse administered after his fall. From the 
great diificulty of compelling the king to observe the bounda- 
ries of law, the English clergy, to whom we are much indebted 
for their zeal in behalf of liberty during this reign, devised 
means of binding his conscience and terrifying his imagination 
by religious sanctions. The s(^lemn excommunication, accom- 
panied witli the most awful threats, pronounced against the 
violators of Magna Charta, is well known from our common 
histories. The king was a party to this ceremony, and swore 
to observe the charter. Ikit Henry III., though a very devout 
person, had his own notions as to the validity of an oath that 
affected his power, and indeed passed his life in a series of 
perjuries. According to tlie creed of that age, a i)apal dis- 



418 MAGNA CHARTA. Cuap. VIII. Part II. 

pensation might annul any prior engagement ; and lie was 
generally on sufficiently good terms with Rome to obtain such 
an indulgence. 

2. Though the prohibition of levying aids or escuages with- 
out consent of Parliament had been omitted in all Henry's 
charters, yet neither one nor the other seems, in fact, to have 
been enacted at discretion throughout his reign. On the con- 
trary, the barons frequently refused the aids, or rather subsi- 
dies, which his prodigality was always demanding. Indeed 
it would probably have been impossible for the king, however 
frugal, stripped-as he was of so many lucrative though oppres- 
sive prerogatives by the Great Charter, to support the expen- 
diture of government from his own resources. Tallages on 
his demesnes, and especially on the rich and ill-affected city 
of London, he imposed without scruple ; but it does not appear 
that he ever pretended to a right of general taxation. We 
may, therefore, take it for granted that tlie clause in John's 
charter, though not expressly renewed, was still considered as 
of binding force. The king was often put to great inconven- 
ience by the refusal of supply ; and at one time was reduced 
to sell his plate and jewels, wliich the citizens of London 
buying, he was provoked to exclaim with envious spite against 
their riches, which he had not been able to exhaust. 

3. The power of granting money must of course imply the 
power of withholding it ; yet this has sometimes been little 
more than a nominal privilege. But in this reign the Iilnglish 
Parliament exercised their right of refusal, or, what was much 
better, of conditional assent. Great discontent was ex})ressed 
at the demand of a subsidy in 1237; and the king alleging 
that he had expended a great deal of money on his sister's 
marriage with the emperor, and also upon his own, the barons 
answered that he had not taken their advice in those affairs, 
nor ought they to share the punishment of acts of imprudence 
they had not committed. In 1241, a subsidy having been 
demanded for the war in Poitou, the barons drew up a remon- 
strance, enumerating all the grants they had made on former 
occasions, but always on condition tliat the imposition shoidd 
not be turned into precedent. Their last subsidy, it appears, 
had been paid into the hands of four barons, who were to 
expend it at their discretion for the benefit of the king and 
kingdom — an early instance of parliamentary control over 
public expenditure. Finally, the barons positively refused 
any money, and he extorted 1500 marks from the city of Lon- 
don. Some years afterwards they declared their readiness to 



English Const. UNDER HENRY III. 419 

burJeu themselves more than ever if they could secure the 
observance of the charter ; and re(|uested that the justiciary, 
chancellor, and treasurer might be appointed with consent of 
Parliament, according, as they asserted, to ancient custom, and 
might hold their offices during good behavior. 

Forty years of mutual dissatisfaction had elapsed, when a 
single act of Henry's improvidence brought on a crisis which 
endangered his throne. Innocent IV., out of mere animosity 
against the family of Frederick II., left no means untried to 
raise up a competitor for the crown of ISTaples, which Manfred 
had occupied. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, having been pru- 
dent enough to decline this speculation, the pope offered to 
support Henry's second son. Prince Edmund. Tempted by 
such a prospect, the silly king involved himself in irretriev- 
able embarrassments by prosecuting an enterprise which could 
not possibly be advantageous to England, and upon which he 
entered without the advice of his Parliament. Destitute him- 
self of money, he Avas compelled to throw tlie expense of this 
new crusade upon the pope ; but the assistance of liome was 
never gratuitous, and Henry actually pledged his kingdom for 
the money which she might expend in a war for her advantage 
and his own. He did not even want the effrontery to tell Par- 
liament in 1257, introducing his son Edmund as king of Sicily, 
that they were bound for the repayment of 14,000 marks with 
interest. The pope had also, in furtherance of the N"eapolitan 
project, conferred upon Henry the tithes of all benefices in 
England, as well as the first-fruits of such as should be vacant. 
Such a concession drew upon the king the implacable resent- 
ment of his clergy, already complaining of the cowardice or 
connivance that had during all his reign exposed them to the 
shameless exactions of Rome. Henry had now, indeed, cause 
to regret his precipitancy. Alexander IV., the reigning pon- 
tiff, threatened him not only with a revocation of the grant to 
his son, but with an excommunication and general interdict, if 
the money advanced on his account should not be immediately 
repaid, and a Roman agent explained the demand to a 
Parliament assembled in London. The sum required was so 
enormous, we are told, that it struck all the hearers with 
astonishment and horror. The nobility of the realm were in- 
dignant to think that one man's supine folly should thus bring 
them to ruin. Who can deny that measures beyond the ordinary 
course of the constitution were necessary to control so prodi- 
gal and injudicious a sovereign ? Accordingly, the barons in- 
sisted that twenty -four persons should be nominated, half by 



420 STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION Chap. VIII. Part II. 

the king and half by themselves, to reform the state of the 
kingdom. These were appointed on the meeting of the Par- 
liament at Oxford, after a prorogation. 

The seven years that followed are a revolutionary period, 
the events of which we do not find satisfactorily explained by 
the historians of the time. A king divested of prerogatives 
by his people soon appears even to themselves an injured 
party. And as the baronial oligarchy acted with that arbi- 
trary temper which is never pardoned in a government that 
has an air of usurpation about it, the Royalists began to gain 
ground, chiefly through the defection of some who had joined 
in the original limitations imposed on the crown, usually called 
the provisions of Oxford. An ambitious man, confident in his 
talents and popularity, ventured to display too marked a supe- 
riority above his fellows in the same cause. But neither his 
character nor the battles of Lewes and Evesham, fall strictly 
within the limits of a constitutional history. It is, however, 
important to observe that, even in the moment of success, 
Henry III. did not presume to revoke any part of the Great 
Charter. His victory had been achieved by the arms of the 
English nobility, who had, generally speaking, concurred in 
the former measures against his government, and whose oppo- 
sition to the Earl of Leicester's usurpation was compatible 
with a steady attachment to constitutional liberty. 

§ 12. The opinions of eminent lawyers are, undoubtedly, 
wliere legislative or judicial authorities fail, the best evidence 
that can be adduced in constitutional history. It will, there- 
fore, be satisfactory to select a few passages from Bracton, 
himself a judge at the end of Henry III.'s reign, by which 
the limitations of prerogative by law will clear 1}^ appear to 
have been fully established. " The king," says he, " must not 
be subject to any man, but to God and the law ; for the law 
makes him king. Let the king, therefore, give to the law 
what the law gives to him — dominion and power ; for there 
is no king where will, and not law, bears rule." " The king 
(in another place) can do nothing on earth, being the minister 
of God, l)ut what he can do by law; nor is what is said (in 
the I'andects) any objection, that whatever the prince pleases 
shall be law ; because by the words that follow in that text it 
a])pears to design not any mere will of the prince, but that 
which is established by the advice of his councillors, the king 
giving his authority, and deliberation being had upon it." 
This i)assage is, undoubtedly, a misrepresentation of the fa- 
mous Lex Kegia, which has ever been interi)reted to convey 



English Const. UNDER HENRY III. 421 

the unlimited power of the ])eo|)le to their emperors. But the 
very circumstance of so perverteil a gloss put upon this text is 
a proof that no other doctrine could be admitted in the law of 
England. In another passage Bracton reckons as superior 
to the king, " not only God and the law, by which he is made 
king, but his court of earls and barons ; for the former (co- 
mites) are so styled as associates of the king, and whoever has 
an associate has a master ; so that, if the king were without a 
bridle, that is, the law, they ought to put a bridle upon him." 
Several other passages in Bracton might be produced to the 
same import ; but these are sufficient to demonstrate the im- 
portant fact that, however extensive or even indefinite miglit 
be the royal prerogative in the days of Henry III., the law 
was already its superior, itself but made part of the law, and 
was incompetent to overthrow it. It is true that in this very 
reign the practice of dispensing with statutes by a non-ob- 
stante was introduced, in imitation of the papal dispensations. 
But this prerogative could only be exerted within certain 
limits, and, however pernicious it may be justly thought, was, 
when thus understood and defined, not, strictly speaking, in- 
compatible with the legislative sovereignty of I'arliament. 

§ 13. In eomformity with the system of France and other 
feudal countries, there was one standing council, which as- 
sisted the kings of England in the collection and management 
of their revenue, the administration of justice to suitors, and 
the despatch of all public business. This was styled Curia 
Regis (the King's Court), and held in his palace, or wherever 
he was personally present. It was composed of the great 
officers ; the chief justiciary,^'' the chancellor, the constable, 
marshal, chamberlain, steward, and treasurer, with any others 
whom the king miglit appoint. Of this great court there was, 
as it seems, from the beginning, a particular branch, in which 
all matters relating to the revenue were exclusively trans- 
acted. This, though composed of the same persons, yet, being 
held in a different part of the palace, and for different business, 

" Tlie chief justiciary {capitalis justiciariua) was the greatest subject iu Kiifrlaiui. 
Besides presiding in the Iviug's Court, and in the Excliequer, he was originally, by 
virtue of liis otiice, the regent of the kingdom during the absence of the sovereign, 
wliich, till tiie loss of Normandy, occurred very frequently. The first time when the 
dignify of this office was impaired was at the death of John, when the justiciary, Hu- 
bert de lUugli, being lio,-.iigcd in IJover Castle, those who proclaimed Henry III. at 
(iloucester constituted the Karl of I'embroke governor of the king and kingdom, 
Hubert still retaining his ofliee. In l'J-11 the Archbishop of York was !ipi)i)iiitiMi to the 
regency during Henry's absence in I'oitou, without the title of justiciary. Still the 
office was so considerable that the barons who met in the Oxford I'arliament of 
11^58 insisted that the justiciary should be annually chosen with their approbation. 
But tlie subsequent succes.ses of Henry prevented this being established, and Ed- 
ward I. discoutiuued tlie ofWce altogether. 



422 LAW COURTS. Chap. VIII. Pakt II. 

was distinguislied from the king's Court by the name' of the 
Exchequer — a separation which became complete when civil 
pleas were decided and judgments recorded in this second 
court. In the Exchequer the justices were called barones, or 
barones scaccarii. 

Henry II., in 1176, reduced the justices in the Curia Regis 
from eighteen to five, and ordered that they should hear and 
determine all writs of the kingdom. From this "time, and 
probable from none earlier, we may date the commencement 
of the Court of King's Bench, which very soon acquired, at 
hrst indifferently with the council, and then exclusively, the 
appellation of Curia Regis. ^* 

It is probable that in the age next after the Conquest few 
causes in which the crown had no interest were carried before 
the royal tribunals, every man finding a readier course of jus- 
tice in the manor or county to which he belonged. But by de- 
grees this supreme jurisdiction became more familiar; and, as 
it seemed less liable to partiality or intimidation than the pro- 
vincial courts, suitors grew willing to submit to its expensive- 
ness and inconvenience. It was obviously the interest of the 
King's Court to give such equity and steadiness to its decisions 
as might encourage this disposition. But because few, com- 
paratively si)eaking, could have recourse to so distant a tribunal 
as that of the King's Court, and perhaps also on account of the 
attachment which the English felt to their ancient right of 
trial by the neighboring freeholders, Henry II. established 
itinerant justices to decide civil and criminal pleas within 
each county. -"^ To this excellent institution we have owed the 
uniformity of our common law, which would have otherwise 
been split, like that of France, into a multitude of local cus- 
toms ; and we still owe to it the assurance, wliich is felt by 
the poorest and most remote inhabitant of England, that his 
right is weighed by the same incorrnpt and acute understand- 
ing upon wliich the decision of the highest cpiestions is re- 
posed. The justices of assize seem originally to have gone 
their circuits annually ; and as part of their duty was to set 

18 For much information about tlio Curia T\('ja;is, and especially this branch of it, 
the student of our constitutional history shoiiM iuive recourse to JIadox's History of 
the ExcluMiui'r, and to the Dialogus de Scuccario, written in the time of Henry II. by 
" Richard, liislii.p of London, Treasurer of the Exchequer, son of iS'igel, bishop of 
Ely, bis |ii(i|(i(-sor in tlie oliice," — [Stubbs.] The reader must still keep in mi)id 
the threefold nicaninj,' of Curia Resjis : the common council of the realm ; the select 
council for judicial as well as adTuinistrative purposes; and the Court of King's 
Hench separated from the last in tlie rei;;n of Henry II., and soon afterward acquir- 
ing, exclusively, tlie denomination C'uria Regis. 

1" Justices ill eyre, or, as we now call them, of assize, do not appear to have gone 
their circuits regularly before 22 Henry II. (1170). 



English Const. JUSTICES OF ASSIZE. 423 

tallages upon royal towns, and superintend the collection of 
the revenue, we may be certain tliat there could be no long 
interval. This annual visitation was expressly confirmed by 
the twelfth section of Magna CJiarta, wliich provides also that 
no assize of novel disseizin, or niort d'ancestor, sliould be taken 
except in the shire where the lands in controversy lay. Hence 
this clause stood opposed, on the one hand, to the encroach- 
ments of the King's Court, which might otherwise, by drawing 
pleas of land to itself, have defeated the suitor's right to a jury 
from the vicinage ; and, on the other, to those of the feudal 
aristrocracy, who hated any interference of the crown to chas- 
tise their violations of law, or control their own jurisdiction. 
Accordingly, while the confederacy of barons against Henry 
III. was in its full power, an attempt was made to prevent the 
regular circuits of the judges. 

Long after the sej^aration of the Exchequer from the King's 
Court, another brancli was detached for the decision of private 
suits. This had its beginning, in Madox's opinion, as early as 
tlie reign of Eichard I. But it was comj^letely established by 
Magna Charta. " Common Pleas," it is said in the fourteenth 
clause, " shall not follow our court, but be held in some certain 
place." Thus was formed the Court of Common Bench at 
Westminster, ^° with full and, strictly speaking, exclusive juris- 
diction over all civil disputes, where neither the king's interest, 
nor any matter savoring of a criminal nature, was concerned. 
For of such disputes neither the Court of King's Bench nor 
that of Exchequer can take cognizance, except by means of a 
legal fiction, which, in the one case, supposes an act of force, 
and in the other a debt to the crown. 

§ 14. The principal officers of state, who had originally been 
effective members of the King's Court, began to witlidraw 
from it, after this separation into three courts of justice, and 
left their places to regular lawyers, though the treasurer and 
chancellor of the Exchequer have still seats on the equity side 
of that court, a vestige of its ancient constitution. It would, 
indeed, have been difficult for men bred in camps or palaces to 
fulfil the ordinary functions of judicature under such a system 
of law as had grown up in England. The rules of legal decis- 
ion among a rude people are always very simple ; not serving 
much to guide, far less to control, the feelings of natural 
equity. Such were those which prevailed among the Anglo- 

2" After the erection of the Common Bench the style of the Superior Court began to 
alter. It ceased by degrees to be called the King's Court. Pleas were said to be 
held coram rege, or coram rege ubicunque fuerit. And thus the Court of King's 
Bench was formed out of the remains of the ancient Curia llegis (see above, p. 422). 



424 ORIGIN OF COMMON LAW. Chap. VIII. Paut II. 

Saxons ; requiring no subtler intellect or deeper learning than 
the earl or sheriff at the head of his County Court might be 
expected to possess. But a great change was wrought in about 
a century after the Concpiest. Our English lawyers, prone to 
magnify the aiiti(iuity like the other merits of their system, 
are apt to carry up the date of the common law, till, like the 
pedigree of an illustrious family, it loses itself in the obscurity 
of ancient time. Even Sir Matthew Hale does not hesitate 
to say that its origin is as undiscoverable as that of the Nile. 
15ut though some features of the common law may be distin- 
guishable in Saxon times, while our limited knoAvledge prevents 
us from assigning many of its peculiarities to any deternunable 
period, yet the general character and most essential parts of 
the system were of much later growth. The laws of the Anglo- 
Saxcm kings a,re as different from those collected by Glanvil as 
the laws of two different nations. The pecuniary compositions 
for crimes, especially for homicide, which run through the 
Anglo-Saxon code down to the laws ascribed to Henry I., are 
not mentioned by Glanvil. Death seems to have been the reg- 
ular punisliment of murder, as Avell as robbery. Though the 
investigation by means of ordeal was not disused in his time, 
yet trial by combat, of which we find no instance before the 
Conquest, was evidently j^referred. Under the Saxon govern- 
ment, suits appear to have commenced, even before the king, 
by verbal or written complaint ; at least, no trace remains of 
the original writ, the foundation of our civil procedure. The 
descent of lands before the Conquest was according to the cus- 
tom of gavel-kind, or equal partition among the children ; in 
the age of Henry I., the eldest son took the principal fief to 
his own share ; in that of Glanvil, he inherited all the lands 
held by knight-service ; but the descent of socage lands de- 
pended on the ])articular ci;stom of the estate. By the Saxon 
laws, upon the death of the son without issue, the father in- 
herited; by our common law, he is absolutely, and in every 
case, excluded. Lands were, in general, devisable by testa- 
ment before the Conquest, but not in the time of Henry II., 
exce])t by particular custom. These are sufficient samples of 
the differences between our Saxon and Norman jurisprudence ; 
but the distinct character of the two will strike more forcibly 
every one who peruses successively the laAvs published by Wil- 
kins, and the treatise ascribed to Glanvil. The former re- 
semble the barbaric codes of the Continent, and the capitularies 
of Charlemagne and his family, minute to an excess in appor- 
tioning punishments, but sparing and ind-efinite in treating of 



English Const. CIIAKACTEK OF ENGLISH LAW. 425 

civil rights ; while the other, copious, discriminating, and 
technical, disi)lays the characteristics, as well as nnfolds the 
principles, of English law. It is difficult to assert anything 
decisively as to tlie period between tlie Conquest and the reign 
of Henry II. which presents fewer materials for legal history 
than the preceding age ; but the treatise denominated the 
Laws of Henry I., compiled at the soonest about the end of 
Stephen's reign, bears so much of a Saxon character, that I 
should be inclined to ascribe our present common law to a 
date, so far as it is capable of any date, not much antecedent 
to the publication of Grlanvil. At the same time, since no kind 
of evidence attests any sudden and radical change in the juris- 
prudence of England, the question must be considered as left 
in great obscurity. Terhaps it might be reasonable to con- 
jecture that the treatise called Leges Henrici Primi contains 
the ancient usages still prevailing in the inferior jurisdictions, 
and that of Glanvil the rules established by the Norman law- 
yers of the King's Court, which would of course acquire a 
general recognition and efficacy, in consequence of the institu- 
tion of justices holding their assizes periodically throughout 
the country. 

The capacity of deciding legal controversies was now only 
to be found in men who had devoted themselves to that pecu- 
liar study ; and a race of such men arose, whose eagerness, and 
even enthusiasm, in the profession of the law were stimulated 
by the self-complacency of intellectual dexterity in threading 
its intricate and thorny mazes. The Normans are noted in 
their own country for a shrewd and litigious temper, which 
may have given a character to our courts of justice in early 
times. Something, too, of that excessive subtlety, and tliat 
preference of technical to rational principles which runs through 
our system, may be imputed to the scholastic philosophy wldch 
was in vogue during the same period, and is marked by the 
same features. But we have just reason to boast of the leading 
causes of these defects — an adherence to fixed rules, and a 
jealousy of judicial discretion, which have in no country, I 
believe, been carried to such a length. Hence, precedents of 
adjudged cases, becoming authorities for the future, have been 
constantly noted, and form, indeed, almost the sole ground of 
argument in questions of mere law. But, these authorities 
being frequently unreasonable and inconsistent — partly from 
the infirmity of all human reason, partly from the imperfect 
manner in which a number of unwarranted and incorrect re- 
porters have handed them down — later judges grew anxious 



426 CHARACTER OF ENGLISH LAW. Chap. VIII. Part IL 

to elude by impalpable distinctions what they did not venture 
to overturn. In some instances this evasive skill has been 
applied to acts of the legislature. Those who are moderately 
conversant with the history of our law will easily trace other 
circumstances that have co-operated in j^roducing that technical 
and subtle system which regulates the course of real property 
— for, as that formed almost the whole of our ancient juris- 
prudence, it is there that we must seek its original character. 
But much of the same spirit pervades every part of the law. 
No tribunals of a civilized people ever borrowed so little, even 
of illustration, from the writings of philosophers, or from 
the institutions of other countries. Hence law has been studied, 
in general, rather as an art than a science — with more solici- 
tude to know its rules and distinctions than to perceive their 
application to that for wliich all rules of law ought to have 
been established — the maintenance of public and private 
rights. 

§ 15. Whatever may be thought of the effect which the 
study of the law had upon the rights of the subject, it conduced 
materially to the security of good order by ascertaining the 
hereditary succession of the crown. Five kings out of seven 
that followed William the Conqueror were usurpers, according, 
at least, to modern notions. Of these, Stephen alone encoun- 
tered any serious opposition upon that ground ; and, with re- 
spect to him, it must be remembered that all the barons, 
himself included, had solemnly sworn to maintain the succession 
of Matilda. Henry II. procured a parliamentary settlement 
of the crown upon his eldest and second sons — a strong pre- 
sumption that their hereditary right was not absolutely secure. 
A mixed notion of right and choice, in fact, prevailed as to 
the succession of every European monarchy. The coronation 
oath,^^ and the form of popular consent then required, were 
considered as more material, at least to perfect a title, than 
we deem them at present. They gave seizin, as it were, of the 
crown, and, in cases of disputed pretensions, had a sort of 
judicial efficacy. The Chronicle of Dunstable says, concerning 
Richard I., that he was " elevated to the throne by hereditary 
right, after a solemn election by the clergy and people : " 
words that indicate the current principles of that age. It is 
to be observed, however, that Eichard took upon him the ex- 
ercise of royal prerogatives without waiting for his coronation. 
The succession of John has certainly passed, in modern times, 

21 The early kings always date their reign from their coronation, and not from the 
decease of their predecessors. 



English Const. IIEEEDITARY RIGHT TO CROWN. 427 

for an usurpation : I do not find that it was considered as such 
hy his own contemporaries on this side of the Channel. The 
question of inheritance between an uncle and the son of his 
deceased elder brother was yet unsettled, as we learn from 
Glanvil, even in private succession. In the case of sovert ign- 
ties, which were sometimes contended to require different rules 
from ordinary patrimonies, it was, and continued long to be, 
the most uncertain point in public law. John's pretensions to 
the crown might, therefore, be such as the English were justi- 
fied in admitting, especially as his reversionary title seems to 
have been acknowledged in the reign of his brother Richard. 
In a charter of the first year of his reign John calls himself 
king " by hereditary right, and through the consent and favor 
of the Church and peo])le." 

It is deserving of remark that, during the rebellions against 
this prince and his son Henry III., not a syllable was breathed 
in favor of Eleanor, Arthur's sister, who, if the present rules of 
succession had been established, was the undoubted heiress of 
his right. The barons chose rather to call in the aid of Louis, 
with scarcely a shade of title, though with mucli better means 
of maintaining himself. One should think tliat men whose 
fathers had been in the field for Matilda could make no diffi- 
culty about female succession. But I doubt whether, notwith- 
standing that precedent, the crown of England was universally 
acknowledged to be capable of descending to a female heir. 
Great averseness had been shown by the nobility of Henry I. to 
his proposal of settling the kingdom on his daughter. And 
from a remarkable ])assage which I shall jjroduce in a note, it 
appears that even in the reign of Edward III. the succession 
was supposed to be confined to the male line.-- 

At length, about the middle of the thirteenth century, the 
lawyers applied to the crown the same strict principles of 
descent which regulate a private inheritance. Edward I. was 
proclaimed immediately upon his father's death, though absent 
in Sicily. Something, however, of the old principle may be 
traced in this proclamation, issued in his name by the guardians 

2= This is intimated by tlie treaty made in 1339 for a marriage between tlie eldest 
son of Edward III. and the Duke of Brabant's daughter. Edward therein promises 
that, if his son should die before him, leaving male issue, he will procure the consent 
of liis barons, nobles, and cities (that is, of I'urlianient ; nobles here meaning l<niglils, 
if the word has any distinct sense ) for such issue to inherit the liingdom ; and if he 
die leaving a daughter only, Edward or his heir shall make such provision for her as 
belongs to the daughter df a king. — Rymer, t. v., p. 114. It may be inferred from 
this instrument that, in Edward's intention, if not by the constitution, the Salic law 
was to regulate the succession of the English crown. This law, it must be remem- 
bered, he was compelled to admit in his claim on the kingdom of l''rance, though with 
a certain modilication which gave a pretext of title to himself. 



428 EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES. Chap. VIII. Pakt II. 

of the realm, where he asserts the crown of England "to 
have devolved upon him by hereditary succession and the 
will of his nobles." These last words were omitted in the 
proclamation of Edward II. ; since whose time the crown has 
been absolutely liereditary. The coronation oath, and the 
recognition of the people at that solemnity, are formalities 
which convey no right either to the sovereign or the people, 
though they may testify the duties of each. 

§ 1(). I cannot conclude the present chapter without observ- 
in ;• one most prominent and characteristic distinction between 
the constitution of England and that of every other country in 
Europe — I mean its refusal of civil privileges to the lower 
nobility, or those whom we denominate the gentry. In France, 
in S[)ain, in Germany, wherever, in short, we look, the appel- 
lations of nobleman and gentleman have been strictly synony- 
mous. Those entitled to bear them by descent, by tenure of 
land, by office or royal creation, have formed a class distin- 
guished by privileges inherent in their blood from ordinary 
freemen. Marriage with noble families, or the purchase of 
military fiefs, or the participation of many civil offices, were, 
more or less, interdicted to the commons of France and the 
empire. Of these restrictions nothing, or next to nothing, was 
ever known in England. The law has never taken notice of 
gentlemen. From the reign of Henry III. at least, the legal 
equality of all ranks below the peerage was, to every essential 
purpose, as complete as at present. Compare two writers 
nearly contemporary, I^racton with Beaumanoir, and mark how 
the customs of England are distinguishable in this respect. 
The Frenchman ranges the people under three divisions — the 
noble, the free, and the servile ; our countryman has no gen- 
eric class, but freedom and villenage. No restraint seems ever 
to have lain upon marriage ; nor have the children even of a 
peer been ever deemed to lose any privilege by his union with 
a commoner. The purchase of lands held by knight-service 
was always open to all freemen. A few privileges, indeed, 
were confined to those who had received knighthood ; but, upon 
the whole, there was a virtual equality of rights among all the 
commoners of England. What is most particular is, that the 
peerage itself imparts no privilege except to its actual pos- 
sessor. In every other coutitry the descendants of nobles can- 
not but themselves be noble, because tlieir nobility is the 
immediate consequence of their birth. But though we com- 
monly say that the blood of a peer is ennobled, yet this expres- 
sion seems hardly accurate, and fitter for heralds and lawyers j 



English Const. EQUALITY AMONG FREEMEN. 429 

since, in truth, nothing confers nobility but the actual descent 
of a peerage. The sons of peers, as we well know, are com- 
moners, and totally destitute of any legal right beyond a bar- 
ren precedence. 

There is no part, perhaps, of our constitution so admirable 
as this equality of civil rights — this isonomia, which the 
philosophers of ancient Greece only hoped to find in demo- 
cratical government.^'^ From the beginning our law has been 
no respecter of persons. It screens not the gentleman of 
ancient lineage from the judgment of an ordinary jury, nor 
from ignominious punishment. It confers not, it never did 
confer, those unjust immunities from public burdens which 
the superior orders arrogated to themselves upon tne Conti- 
nent. Thus, while the privileges of our peers, as hereditary 
legislators of a free people, are incomparably more valuable 
and dignified in their nature, they are far less invidious in 
their exercise than those of any other nobility in Europe. It 
is, I am firmly persuaded, to this peculiar democratical char- 
acter of the English monarchy that we are indebted for its 
long permanence, its regular improvement, and its present 
vigor. It is a singular, a providential circumstance, that, in 
an age wdieii the gradual march of civilization and commerce 
was so little foreseen, our ancestors, deviating from the usages 
of neighboring countries, should, as if deliberately, have 
guarded against that expansive force whi(;h, in Ijursting 
through obstacles improvidently opposed, has scattered havoc 
over Europe. 

This tendency to civil equality in the English law may, I 
think, be ascribed to several concurrent causes. In tlie first 
place, the feudal institutions were far less military in England 
than upon the Continent. From the time of Henry II. the 
escuage or pecuniary commutation for personal service became 
almost universal The armies of our kings were composed of 
hired troops, great part of whom certainly were knights and 
gentlemen, but who, serving for pay, and not by virtue of their 
birth or tenure, preserved nothing of the feudal cliaracter. It 
was not, however, so much for the ends of national as of 
private warfare, that the relation of lord and vassal was con- 
trived. The right which every baron in France possessed, 
of redressing his own wrongs and those of his tenants by 
arms, rendered their conuection strictly military. But we read 

23 nAT)9o9 apxov npOiTov fi.iv oiii'Oixa KaAAicrrov ex^'- 'O'oi'OM.tai', says tlie advocate of 
democracy, in the discussions of forms of government which Herodotus (iii., 80) has 
put into the ninutlis of the Persian satraps, after the murder of Snierdis; a scene 
conceived iu the spirit of Corueille. 



430 EQUALITY AMUls'G FliEEMEN. Chap. Vlll. Pabx II, 

very little of private wars in England. Notwithstanding 
some passages m Glaavil, whieli certainly appear to admit 
tlieir legality, it is not easy to reconcile this witli the general 
tenor of our laws. They must always have been a breach of 
the king's peace, which our tSaxon lawgivers were perpetually 
striving to preserve, and which the Conqueror and his sons 
more effectually maintained. Nor can we trace many instances 
of actual hostilities among the nobility of England after the 
Conquest, except during such an anarchy as the reign of 
.Steplien, or the minority of Henry 111. The most prominent 
instance, perhaps, of what may be deemed a private war arose 
out of a contention between the earls of Gloucester and Here- 
ford, in the reign of Edward I., during which acts of extraor- 
dinary violence were perpetrated ; but, far from its having 
passed for lawful, these powerful nobles were both committed 
to j^rison and paid heavy fines. Thus the tenure of knight- 
service was not, in effect, much more peculiarly connected with 
the profession of arms than that of socage. There was noth- 
ing in the former condition to generate that high self-estima- 
tion which military habits inspire. On the contrary, the 
burdensome incidents of tenure in chivalry rendered socage 
the more advantageous, though less honorable, of the two. 

In the next place, we must ascribe a good deal of efficacy to 
the old Saxon principles that survived the conquest of William 
and infused themselves into our common law. A respectable 
class of free socagers, having, in general, fnll rights of alienat- 
ing their lands, and holding them probably at a small certain 
rent from the lord of the manor, frequently occur in Dooms- 
day-book. Though, as I have already observed, these were 
derived from the superior and more fortunate Anglo-Saxon 
ceorls, they were perfectly exempt from all marks of villen- 
age both as to their persons and estates. Most have derived 
their name from the Saxon soc, which signifies a franchise, 
especially one of jurisdiction, and they undoubtedly were 
suitors to the court-baron of the lord, to whose soc, or right 
of justice, they belonged. They were consequently judges in 
civil causes, determined before the manorial tribunal. Such 
privileges set them greatly above the roturiers or censiers of 
France. They were all Englishmen, and their tenure strictly 
English; which seems to have given its credit in the eyes of 
our lawyers, when the name of Englishman was affected even 
by those of Norman descent, and the laws of Edward the 
Confessor became the universal demand. Certainly Glanvil, 
and still more Bracton, treat the tenure in free socage with 



English Const. NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



431 



great respect. And we have reason to think that this chxss 
of freeliolders was very nuuieruus even before the reign of 
Edward I. 

But, lastly, the change which took place in the constitution 
of Parliament consummated the degradation, if we must use 
the word, of the lower nobility : 1 mean not so much their 
attendance by representation instead of personal summons, as 
their election by the whole body of freeholders, and their 
separation, along with citizens and burgesses, from the House 
of Peers. These changes will fall under consideration in the 
following chapter. 



NOTES TO CHAPTEE, VIII. — PART 11. 



1. THE LEGISLATION OF THE GREAT 
COUN(nL, 

On this Council, the Commune Concil- 
ium Regni, see tlie remarks in the Keport 
of Lords' Committee ou the Dignity of a 
Peer (lsl9, 2d edition. 1829), witli the criti- 
cisms upon it by Mr. Allen in the " Edin- 
burgh Review " (vol xxxv.). 

Tlie custom of the Anglo-Saxon kings 
had been to hold meetings of their witan 
very frequently, at least in the regular 
course of their government. And this 
was also the rule in the grand fiefs of 
France. The pomp of their court, the 
maintenance of loyal respect, the power 
of keeping a vigilant eye over the be- 
havior of the chief men, were sufficient 
motives for the Norman kings to jireserve 
this custom; and the nobility of course 
saw in it the security of their privileges 
as well as the exhibition of their impor- 
tance. Hence we find that William and 
his sons held their courts de more, as a 
regular usage, three times a year, and 
generally at the great festivals, and in 
dilTereut parts of the kingdom. Here the 
public business was t'ansacted. Aids 
were not regularly granted, and laws 
much more rarely enacted in them, yet 
they were still a national council. 

It is to be remarked that, with the ex- 
ception of the charters granted by Wil- 
liam, Henry, and Stephen, which are in 
general rather like confirmations of ex- 
isting privileges than novel enactments, 
though some clauses appear to be of the 
latter kind, little authentic evidence can 
be found of any legislative proceedings 
from t lie Conqviest to the reign of Henry 
II. But the Constitutions of Clarendon, 
in 11G4, are certainly a regular statute ; 
whoever might be the conseutiug parties, 



these famous provisions were enacted in 
the great council of the nation. This is 
equally true of the Assizes of Northamp- 
ton, in 117S. But the earliest Anglo-Nor- 
man law which is extant in reguhir form 
is the assize made at Clarendon for tlie 
preservation of the peace, issued by the 
king early in 1166. ('I'his important docu- 
ment is given at length on p. biS.) In 
other instances the royal [u-erogative may 
perhaps have been held sultieient lor inno- 
vations which, after the constitution be- 
came settled, would luive required the 
sanction of the whole legislature. No act 
of J'arlianient is known to have been made 
under liichnrd I.; but an ordinance, set- 
ting the assize of bread, in the fifth of 
John, is recited to be established " coni- 
nnmi concilio baronum nostrorum." 
^\liether these words afford sufficient 
ground for believing that the assize was 
set in full council of the realm, may pos- 
sibly be doubtful. 

n. duration of distinction betweicn 

NORMAN AND SAXON. 
The passage in a contemporary writer, 
quoted on p. 413, being so unequivocal as 
it is, ought to have much weight in the 
question as to the duration of the distinc- 
tion between the Norman and iCnglish 
races. It is the favorite theory of M. 
Thierry, pushed to an extreme length 
both as to his own country and ours, that 
the conquering nation, Franks in one 
case, Normans in the other, remained 
down to a late period ^a i)eiiod indeed 
to which he assigns no conclusion — un- 
mingled, or at least distinguishable, con- 
stituting a double people of sovereigns 
and subjects, becoming a noble order in 
the state, haughty, oppressive, powerful, 



432 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



or, wlKit is, in one vvorcl, most odious to a 
Fieucii ear iu tlie uiuetueuth century, 
aristocratic. 

It may be worthy of consideration, 
whether tlie Xonnau blood were really 
blended with the native quite so soon as 
the reign of Henry il.; that is, wliether 
intermarriages in the superior classes of 
society had become so frequent as to ellace 
the distinction. M. Tliierry produces a 
few passages which seem to intimate its 
continuance. But these are too loosely 
worded to warrant much regard ; and he 
admits that after the reign of Henry I. 
we have no proof of any liostile spirit on 
the part of the Knglisli towards the new 
dynasty; and tliat some etforts were made 
to conciliate them by representing Henry 
II. as the descendant of the Saxon line. 
(Vol. ii., p. 3~4.) This in fact, was true ; 
and it was still more important that the 
name of English was studiously assumed 
by our kings (ignorant though they might 
be, in M. Thierry's phrase, wliat was the 
vernacular word for that dignity), and 
that the Anglo-Xormans are seldom, if 
ever, mentioned by that separate desig- 
nation. England was their dwelling- 
place, English their name, tlie English 
law their inlieritance ; if this was not 
wholly the case before the separation of 
the mother country under .lolin, and yet 
we do not perceive much limitation 
necessary, it can admit of no question 
afterwards. 

It is, nevertheless, manifest tliat the de- 
scendants of William's tenants in capite, 
and of others who seized on so large a 
portion of our fair country from the Chan- 
nel to the Tweed, formed the chief part of 
that aristocracy which secured tlie liber- 
ties of the Anglo-Saxon race, as well as 
tlieir own, at lluunymede; and wliich, 
sometimes as peers of the realm, some- 
times as well-born commoners, placed 
successive barriers against the exorbi- 
tances of power, and prepared the way for 
that expanded scheme of government 
which we call the English constitution. 
The names in Dugdale's Baronage and 
in his .Suiiinioiiitiones .'id rarlianientum 
speak for tlieni<ilves ; in all the earlier 
periods, and perhaps almost tlirough tlie 
I'lantagenet dynasty, we find a great pre- 
ponderance of such as indicate a Frencli 
source. New families sprang up by de- 
grees, and are now sometimes among our 
chief nobility; but in general, if w(! find 
any at this day who have tolerable pre- 
tensions to deduce tlieir lineage from the 
Conquest, they are of Norman descent; 
the very few Sa\on fninilies that may re- 
main with an anflienfic pedigree in' the 
male line are seldom fonnd in the wealth- 
ier class of gentrv. .Slid on this account 
I must confess flint ^I. Thierry's opinion 
of a long-continued distinction of races 
has more semblance of truth as to this 
kingdom than can be pretended as to 
France, without a blind sacrifice of un- 



deniable facts at the altar of plebeian ma- 
liguity. 

m. ST.\TL'TKS OF WILLIAM THE CON- 
QUEKOR. 

Professor Stubbs remarks ("Select 
Charters," etc., p. 80): "The following 
short record, wliich is found in this, its 
earliest form, in the ' Textus Kofi'ensis,' 
a manuscript written during the reign of 
Henry 1., contains what is probably the 
sum and substance of all the legal enact- 
ments actually made by the Conqueror, 
Independent of his confirmations of the 
earlier laws; they are probably the alter- 
ations or emendations referred to by Hen- 
ry I. in his charter, as made by his father 
in the laws of King Edward : " 
Hie intimatiir quid Jl'illelnms Rex Anglo- 
rum cum priiicijiibus tiuis constituitpost 
(^oiiqiiisitioiiein Anglice. 

1. Ill primis quod super omnia unum 
vellet Deum per totum regnum suuni ve- 
nerari, unani fidem Christi semper invio- 
latam custodiri, pacem et securilatem 
inter Anglos et Normannos servari. 

2. Statuimus etiam ut omnis liber homo 
foedere et sacramento afflrmet, quod infra 
et extra Aiigliam Willelnio regi fideles 
esse volunt, terras et honorem illius omni 
fidelitate cum eo servare, et ante eum 
contra ininiicos defendere. 

.3. Volo autein ut omnes homines qiios 
mecuni adduxi aut post me venerunt sint 
in pace mea et quiete. Et si quis de illis 
occisus fuerit, dimiinus ejus liabeat infra 
quinque dies homicidam ejus si potuerit ; 
sin autem, incipiat persolvere iiiilii xlvi. 
marcas urgenti (jiiamdiu substantia illius 
doniini perduraverit. Ubi vero substantia 
defecerit, totus hundredus in quo oecisio 
facta est commiiniter persolvat quod re- 
manet. 

4. Et omnis Francigena qui tempore re- 
gis Edwardi proplnqni mei fuit in Anglia 
particeps consiietudinum AngIoruni,quod 
ipsi diciint onlilote et aiiscote, persolva- 
tur secundum legem Anglorum, Hoc de- 
cretuni saiictitum est in civitale (hiudia. 

5. Interdicimus etiam ut nulla viva pe- 
ciiniii vendatur aut ematur nisi infra civi- 
tates, "'t hoc ante tres fideles testes; nee 
aliqunm '"em vetustam sine fidejussore et 
Wiiraiito. Quod si aliter fecerit, solvat et 
persolvat, et postea fori.sfacturam. 

f). Decretum est etiam ibi, ut, si Franci- 
genn aiip.Olaverit Angluni de perjurio aut 
miirdro, furto homicidio, ran, quod Angli 
diciint apertam rapinam qu<e negari non 
potest, Anglus se defendat per quod me- 
ihis voluerit, aut judicio ferri aut duello. 
Si iiiitem Anglus infirmus fuerit, inveniat 
nliiiTii <|iii pro eo faciat. Si quis eorum 
victiis fuerit, emendet xl. solidos regi. Si 
Anglus Francigennin appellaverit et pro- 
liare noluerit judicio aut duello, volo ta- 
men Francigenam purgare se sacramento 
non fracto. 

7. Hoc quoque praecipio et volo, ut om- 
nes habeant et teneant legem Edwardi 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



433 



regit; in tt-iris et inomiiibus rebus, adauc- 
tisiis qua constitui ad utilitatem populi 
Angloruin. 

8. Omnis homo qui voluerit se tenere 
pro libero sit in plegio, ut plegius teneat 
et liabeat ilium ad justitiaui si quid otlen- 
derit. Et si quis(juam talium evaserit, vi- 
deaut plegi ut simpliciter solvant quod 
caluniniatum est, et purgent se quia in 
evaso nuUam fraudem noverint. Kequi- 
ratur liundredus et comitatus, sicut ante- 
cessores nostri statuerunt. Et qui juste 
venire deberent et venire noluerint, semel 
summoiieantur; et secundo venire nolu- 
erint, accipiatur unus bos, et summonean- 



tur tertio. Et si iion tertio venerint, 
accipiatur alius bos : quarta autem vice si 
non venerint, reddatur de rebus hominis 
illius qui venire noluerit quod calumnia- 
tum est, quod dicitur ceapgeld; et insuper 
forisfactura regis. 

9. Ego prohibeo ut nullus vendat liomi- 
nem extra patriam super plenam forisfac- 
turam meam. 

10. Interdico etiam ne quis occidatur 
aut s\ispendatur pro aliqua culpa, sed eru- 
antur oculi, et testiculi abscidantur. Et 
hoc praeceptum non sit violatum super 
forisfaeturam meam plenam. — ("MS. 
Bodl. Rawlinson," C. 641.) 



434 THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 



PAET III. 

THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION. 

§ 1. Reign of Edward I. §2. Conflrmutio Cluirtarum. § 3. Constitution of Parlia- 
ment. § 4. Tlie Spiritual l\-t'is. § a. Tlie 'I'eniporal I'eers. Tenure by Barony. 
Ditticulty of the Subject. G. § Origin of Representation of the Commons. Knights 
of Shires. Tlieir i^^xistence doubiluUy traced through tlie Reign of Henrv III. 
§7. State of English Towns at tlie Couque.^t and afterwards. § S. 'J'heir Progress. 
§9. Representatives from them siiuimoned to I'arliament by Earl of Leicester. 
Improbability of an earlier Origin. §10. I'arliaments under Edward 1. §11. 
Separation of Knights and Burgesses from the I'eers. § 12. Edward II. § \3. 
Gradual Progress of the Authority of I'arliament traced through the Reigns of 
Edward III. § IL Of Richard II. § 15. Of Henry IV. § 10. Authority of the 
Houseof Commons under the House of Lancaster. (1.) Right of Taxation. (2.) 
Appropriation of Supplies. (3.) Redress of (.rievances. (4.) Legislative Rights. 
(5.) Controlling the Royal Expenditure. (0.) Impeachment of Ministers. (7.) 
Privilege of Parliament. § 17. Election of Knights and Burgesses. § IS. House 
of Lords. Baronies of Tenure. By Writ. Nature of the latter discussed. §19 
Creation of Peers by Act of Parliament. §20. And by Patent. §21. Summons 
of Clergy to Parliament. §22. King's Ordinary ( ouncil. Its Judicial and other 
Power. § 23. Character of the Plantagenet Government. Prerogative. Its E.x- 
cesses. § 24. Erroneous views corrected. 'Jestimony of Sir John Fortescue to 
the Freedom of the Constitution. § 25. Causes of the superior I.,iberty of England 
considered. § 26. State of Society in England. §27. Habits of Riij'ine. §28. 
Villenage. Its gradual Extinction. §29. Pojjular (Outbreaks. §30. IManuniis- 
sion of Villeins. §31. flatter Years of Henry AT. §32. Regencies. Instances of 
them enumerated. § 33. Pretensions of the House of York, and War of the Roses. 
§ 34. Edward IV. §"35. Conclusion. 

§ 1. Though the undisputed accession of a prince like 
Edward I. to the throne of his father does not seem so con- 
venient a resting-place in history as one of those revolutions 
whicli interrupt the natural chain of events, yet the changes 
wrought during liis reign make it properly an epoch in tlie 
progress of these inquiries. And, indeed, as ours is emphati- 
cally styled a government by king, lords, and commons, we 
cannot, perhaps, in strictness, carry it farther back than the 
admission of the latter into parliament ; so that if the con- 
stant representation of the Commons is to be referred to the 
age of Edward I., it will be nearer the truth to date the Eng- 
lish constitution from that than from any earlier era. 

§ 2. The various statutes affecting the law of property and 
administration of justice, whicli have caused Edward I. to be 
named, rather hyperbolically, the English Justinian, bear no 
immediate relation to our present inquiries. In a constitu- 
tional point of view, the principle object is that statute en- 



English Const. CONFIRMATION OF CHARTERS. 435 

titled the Confirmation of the Charters, which was very reluc- 
tantly conceded by the king, in the twenty-fifth year of his 
reign. I do not know that England has ever produced any 
patriots to Avhose memory she owes more gratitude than 
Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex, and Roger 
Bigocl, earl of Norfolk. In the G-reat Charter the base spirit 
and deserted condition of John take off something from the 
glory of the triumph, though they enhance the moderation of 
those who pressed no farther upon an abject tyrant. But to 
withstand the measures of Edward, a prince unequalled by 
any who had reigned in England since the Conqueror for 
prudence, valor, and success, required a far more intrepid 
patriotism. Their provocations, if less outrageous than tliose 
received from John, were such as evidently manifested a dis- 
position in Edward to reign without any control — a constant 
refusal to confirm tlie charters, which in that age were hardly 
deemed to bind the king without his actual consent ; heavy 
impositions, especially one on the export of wool, and other 
unwarrantable demands. He had acted with such unmeasured 
violence towards the clergy, on account of their refusal of 
further subsidies, that, although the ill-judged policy of that 
class kept their interests too distinct from those of the people, 
it was natural for all to be alarmed at the precedent of des- 
potism.^ These encroachments made resistance justifiable, and 
the circumstances of Edward made it prudent. His ambition, 
luckily for the people, had involved him in foreign warfare, 
from which he could not recede without disappointment and 
dishonor. Thus was wrested from him that famous statute, 
inadequately denominated the Confirmation of the Charters, 
because it added another ynllar to our constitution, not less im- 
portant than the Great Charter itself. 

It was enacted by the 25 Edward I. that the Charter of 
Liberties, and that of the Forest, besides being explicitly con- 
firmed, should be sent to all sheriffs, justices in eyre, and 
other magistrates throughout the realm, in order to their pub- 
lication before the people ; that copies of them should be kept 
in cathedral churches, and publicly read twice in the year, 
accompanied by a solemn sentence of excommunication against 
all who should infringe them ; that any judgment given con- 
trary to these charters should be invalid, and holden for 
naught. This authentic promulgation, those awful sanctions 

1 Tlie fullest account we possess of these domestic transactions from 1294 to 1298 is 
in Walter Hemingforrt, one of the historians edited by Hearne, pp. 52-168. They have 
iDeen vilely perverted by Carte, but extremely well told by Hume, the first writer who 
had the merit of exposing the character of Edward I. 



436 CONSTITUTION OF PARLIAMENT. Chap. VIII. Part III. 

of the Great Charter, would alone render the statute of which 
we are speaking illustrious. But it went a great deal farther. 
Hitherto the king's prerogative of levying money, by name of 
tallage, or prize, from his towns and tenants in demesne, had 
passed unquestioned. Some impositions, that especially on 
the export of wool, affected all his subjects. It was now the 
moment to enfranchise the people, ancl give that security to 
private property Avhich Magna Charta had given to personal 
liberty. By the 5th and 6th sections of this statute, " the 
aids, tasks, and prizes "before taken are renounced as prece- 
dents ; and the king " grants for him and his heirs, as well 
as to archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of 
Holy Church, as also to earls, barons, and to all commonalty 
of the land, that for no business from henceforth we shall 
take siich manner of aids, tasks, nor prizes, but by the common 
assent of the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving 
the ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed." The toll 
upon wool, so far as levied by the king's mere prerogative, is 
expressly released by the Ttli section. "■^ 

§ 3. We come now to a part of our subject exceedingly im- 
portant, but more intricate and controverted than any other, 
the Constitution of Parliament. I have taken no notice of this 
in the last section, in order to present uninterruptedly to the 
reader the gradual progress of our legislature down to its com- 
plete establishment under the Edwards. 

§ 4. The Spiritual Peers. — One constituent branch of the 
great councils held by William the Conqueror and all his suc- 
cessors was composed of the bishops and the heads of reli- 
gious houses holding their temporalities immediately of the 
crown. It has been frequently maintained that these spiritual 
lords sat in Parliament only bv virtue of their baronial tenure. 
And certainly they did all hold baronies, Avhich, according to 
the analogy of lay peerages, were sufficient to give them such a 
share in the legislature. Nevertheless, I think that this is rath- 
er too contracted a view of the rights of the English hierarchy, 
and, indeed, by im[)lication, of the peerage ; for a great coun- 
cil of advice and assent in matters of legislation, or national 
imi)ortance, was essential to all the Northern governments. 



2 The Confirmatio Chartarum is properly denomin.ited a statute, and always printed 
as such; but in form, like Magna Oharta, it is a charter, or letters patent, proceeding 
from tlie crown, without even rcciliii;; tlie consent of the realm. And its " teste " is 
at Ghent, 2 Nov. l-'i»7 — Kdwaid h;iviii>( engaged, conjointly with tlie Count of Flan- 
ders, in a war witli Philip the Fair. I?ut a Parliament had been held at London, 
when the barons insisted on these concessions. The circumstances are not wholly 
unlike tliese of Magna Charta. The Contirmatio Chartarum is printed on page 549. 



English Const. TEMPORAL PEERS. 437 

And all of them, exc(>pt, ])erliaps, the Lombards, invited the 
superior ecclesiastics to their councils ; not upon any feudal 
notions, which at that time had hardly begun to prevail, but 
chiefly as representatives of the Church and of religion itself ; 
next, as more learned and enlightened councillors than the 
lay nobility ; and in some degree, no doubt, as rich proprietors 
of land. It will be remembered, also, that ecclesiastical and 
temporal affairs Avere originally decided in the same assem- 
blies, both upon the Continent and in England. The Norman 
Conquest, which destroyed the Anglo-Saxon nobility, and sub- 
stituted a new race in their stead, could not affect the immor- 
tality of Church possessions. The bishops of William's age 
were entitled to sit in his councils by the general custom of 
Europe, and by the common law of England, which the Con- 
quest did not overturn. 

§ 5. The Temporal Peers. — Next to these spiritual lords are 
the earls and barons, or lay peerage of England. The former 
dignity was, perhaps, not so merely official as in the Saxon 
times, although the earl was entitled to the third penny of all 
emoluments arising from the administration of justice in the 
County Courts, and might, ])erhaps, command the militia of 
his county, when it was called forth. Every earl was also a 
baron, and held an honor or barony of the crown ; for which 
he paid a higher relief than an ordinary baron, probably on 
account of the profits of his earldom. 

It is universally agreed that the only baronies known for 
two centuries after the Conquest were incident to the tenure 
of land held immediately from the crown. There are, how- 
ever, material difficulties in the way of rightly understanding 
their nature which reciuire careful examination. All tenants- 
in-chief of the crown, by knight-service, were summoned to 
the king's council, and were peers of his court. To all of 
these tlie term Baron was originally applied, a word of very 
wide significance.^ But in course of time a distinction arose 
between the Greater Barons and Lesser Barons, the former 
holding their lands by barony {per haroniani), and the latter 
simply by knight-service ; and gradually the name of baron 
was confined to the former class. It is difficult to determine 
the characteristic differences of tbe two, or the way in which 
the distinction arose ; but it would seem that the Greater 
Barons held, under one title, a number of knight's fees — that 

3 The word bnro originally meant only a man, and is not unfrequently applied to 
common freeholders, as in the phrase of court-baron. It was used too for the magis- 
trates or chief men of cities, as it is still for the judges of the Exchequer, and the 
representatives of the Cinque Ports. 



438 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF Chap. VIII. Part III. 

is, of estates, from each of wluch the Feudal service of a 
knight was due. There is, however, complete proof of the 
separation between the two classes of barons before the reign 
of John, and the term baron came to be applied exclusively to 
the greater barons. Tenants-in-chief are enumerated distinctly 
from earls and barons in the charter of Henry I. (See p. 
541.) Knights, as well as barons, are named as present in the 
Parliament of Northampton in 11G5, in that held at the same 
town in 1176, and upon other occasions. 

We learn from the Great Charter that the greater barons 
were summoned to the king's council by particular writs ; the 
other tenants-in-chief by one general summons through the 
sheriffs of their several counties, whenever an aid or sciitage 
was required.'' The consent of all the tenants-in-chief was 
required for taxation ; and there appears sufficient evidence 
that they were occasionally present for other important pur- 
poses. It is, however, very probable that writs of summons 
were actually addressed only to those of distinguished name, 
to those resident near the place of meeting, or to the servants 
and favorites of the crown. This seems to be deducible from 
the words in the Great Charter, which limit the king's engage- 
ment to summon all tenants-in-chief, through the sheriff, to 
the case of his requiring an aid or scutage, and still more 
from the withdrawing of this promise in the first year of 
Henry III. The privilege of attending on such occasions, 
though legally general, may never have been generally exer- 
cised. 

The result of the whole inquiry into the constitution of 
I'arliament, down to the reign of John, seems to be — 1. That 
the Norman kings explicitly renounced all prerogative of 
levying money on the immediate military tenants of the 
crown, without their consent given in a great council of the 
realm ; this immunity extending, also, to their sub-tenants and 
dependents. 2. That all these tenants-in-cliief liad a constitu- 
tional right to attend, and ought to be summoned ; but whether 
they coidd attend without a siimmons is not manifest. 3. 
That the summons w^as usually directed to the higher barons, 
and to such of a second class as the king pleased, many being 
omitted for different reasons, though all had a right to it. 
4. That on occasions when money was not to be demanded, but 
alterations made in the law, some of these second barons, or 

•* "Facipmus siimmoncri arcliiepiscnpos, episoopos, abbates, comites et majores 
barones regni .siaiillatim per literas nostras. Et prieterea faciemus siimnioneri in 
generali per vicecomites et ballivos nostros omnes alios qui in capite teuent de nobis." 



English Const. rARLIAMENl'AllY REPRESENTATION. 439 

tenants-in-chief, were at least occasionally summoned, but 
whether by strict right or usage does not fully appear. 5. 
Tliat the irregularity of passing many of them over when coun- 
cils were held for the purpose of levying money, led to the 
provision in the Great Charter of John by which the king 
promises that they shall all be summoned through the sheriff 
on such occasions; but the promise does not extend to any 
other subject of parliamentary deliberation. (J. That even this 
concession, though but the recognition of a known right, ap- 
peared so dangerous to some in the government that it was 
withdrawn in the first charter of Henry III. 

But this attendance in Parliament of inferior tenants-in- 
chief, some of them too poor to have received knighthood, 
grew insupportably vexatious to themselves, and was not well 
liked by the king. He knew them to be dependent upon the 
barons, and dreaded the confluence of a multitude who assumed 
the privilege of coming in arms to the appointed place. So 
inconvenient and mischievous a scheme could not long subsist 
among an advancing people, and fortunately the true remedy 
was discovered with little difficulty. 

§ 6. The principle of representation, in its widest sense, can 
hardly be unknown to any government not purely democrati- 
cal. The system of ecclesiastical councils, considered as organs 
of the Church, rested upon the principle of a virtual or an ex- 
press representation, and had a tendency to render its applica- 
tion to national assemblies more familiar. 

We find nothing that can arrest our attention, in searching 
out the origin of county representation, till we come to a writ in 
the fifteenth year of John, directed to all the sheriffs in the 
following terms : " Rex Vicecomiti N., salutem. Prfficipimus 
tibi quod omnes milites ballivae tute qui summoniti fuerunt 
esse apud Oxoniam ad Nos a die Omnium Sanctorum in quin- 
decim dies venire facias cum arniis suis : corpora vero baronum 
sine armis singulariter, et quatuor discretos milites de comitatu 
tuo, illuc venire facias, ad eundem terminum, ad loquendum 
nobiscum de negotiis regni nostri." Still it remains problem- 
atical whether these four knights (the only clause which 
concerns our purpose) were to be elected by the county or re- 
turned in the nature of a jury, at the discretion of the sheriff. 
Since there is no sufficient proof whereupon to decide, we can 
only say with hesitation that there mny have been an instance 
of county representation in the fifteenth year of Jolm. 

We may next advert to a practice, of which there is very 
clear proof in the reign of Henry III. Subsidies granted in 



440 PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION. Ch. VIII. Pt. III. 

Parliament were assessed, not as in former times by the jus- 
tices npon their circuits, hut hy knights freely chosen in tlie 
County Court. This a})pears by two writs, one of the fourtli 
and one of the ninth year of Henry III. At a subsequent 
period, by a provision of the Oxford Parliament in 1258, every 
county elected four knights to inquire into grievances, and 
deliver their inquisition into Parliament. 

The next writ now extant, that wears the appearance of par- 
liamentary representation, is in the thirty-eighth of Henry 111. 
This, after reciting that the earls, barons, and other great men 
(cteteri magnates) were to meet at London, three weeks after 
Easter, with horses and arms, for the purpose of sailing into 
Gascony, requires the sheriff to compel all within his jurisdic- 
tion, who hold twenty pounds a year of the king in chief, or of 
those in ward of the king, to aj)pear at the same time and 
place. And that, besides those mentioned, he shall cause to 
come before the king's council at AVestminster, on the fifteenth 
day after Easter, two good and discreet knights of his county, 
wliom the men of the county shall have chosen for this pur- 
pose, in the stead of all and each of them, to consider, along 
with the knights of other counties, what aid they will grant 
the king in such an emergency. In the principle of election, 
and in the object of the assembly, which was to grant money, 
this certainly resembles a summons to Parliament. There are, 
indeed, anomalies suificiently remarkable upon the face of the 
writ which distinguish this meeting from a regular Parliament. 
But when the scheme of obtaining money from the commons 
of shires through the consent of their representatives had once 
been entertained, it was easily applicable to more formal coun- 
cils of the nation. 

A few years later there appears another writ analogous to a 
summons. During the contest between Henry III. and the 
confederate barons in lUGl, they presumed to call a sort of 
Parliament, summoning three kniglits out of every county, 
" secum tractaturos super communibus negotiis regni." This 
we learn only by an opposite writ issued by the king, directing 
the sheriff to enjoin these knights wlio had been convened by 
the earls of Leicester and Gloucester to their meeting at St. 
Alban's, that they should repair instead to the king at Wind- 
sor, and to no other place, " nobiscum super prsemissis collo- 
quium habituros." It is not absolutely certain that these 
knights were elected by their respective counties. But even 
if they were so, this assembly has much less the appearance of 
a Parliament than that in the thirty-eighth of Henry III. 



English Const. PKOGKESS OF TOWNS. 441 

At length, in the year 1265, the forty-ninth of Henry III., 
while he was a captive in the hands of Simon de Montfort, 
writs were issued in his name to all the sheriffs, directing them 
to return two knights for the body of their county, with two 
citizens or burgesses for every city and borough contained with- 
in it. This, therefore, is the epoch at which the representa- 
tion of the comr.ions becomes indisputably manifest ; even 
should we reject altogether the more equivocal instances of it 
which have just been enumerated. 

Whether the knights were still elected by only the king's 
military tenants, to spare them the inconvenience of personal 
attendance, or by the freeholders in general, is a difficult ques- 
tion. The legal antiquaries are divided. Prynne does not 
seem to have doubted but that the knights were "elected m tlie 
full county, by and for tlie whole county," without respect to 
the tenure of the freeholders. But Brady and Carte are of a 
different opinion. Yet their disposition to narrow the basis of 
the constitution is so strong, tliat it creates a sort of prejudice 
against their authority. And if I might offer an opinion on so 
obscure a subject, I should be much inclined to believe that, 
even from the reign of Henry III., the election of knights by 
all freeholders in the County Court, without regard to tenure, 
was little, if at all, different from what it is at present.^ 

§ 7. The progress of towns in several Continental countries, 
from a condition bordering upon servitude to wealth and lib- 
erty, has more than once attracted our attention in other parts 
of the present work. Their growth in England, both from 
general causes and imitative policy, was very similar and near- 
ly coincident. Some of tlie greater towns, and London in par- 
ticular, enjoyed the right of electing magistrates with a 
certain jurisdiction before the Conquest.*^ But at the time of 
the Conquest we find the burgesses or inhabitants of towns 
living under the superiority or protection of the king, or of 
some other lord, to whom tliey paid annual rents, and deter- 
minate dues or customs. Besides these regular payments, 
which were in general not heavy, they were liable to tallages 
at the discretion of their lords. 

One of the earliest and most important changes in the con- 
dition of the burgesses was the conversion of their individual 
tributes into a perpetual rent from the whole borough. The 
town was then said to be affirmed, or let in fee-farm, to the 

= This question has been discussed witli much ability in the "Edinburgh Review," 
vol. xxvi., p. :yi. 

6 Ou the Municipal Rights of Loudon, see Note I. 



442 CHARTERS OF INCORPORATION. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

burgesses and their successors forever. Previously to such a 
grant the lord held the toAvn in his demesne, and was the legal 
proprietor of the soil and tenements ; though I by no means 
apprehend that the burgesses were destitute of a certain 
estate in their possessions. But of a town in fee-farm he 
only kept the superiority and the inheritance of the annual 
rent, which lie might recover by distress. The burgesses held 
their lands by burgage-tenure, nearly analogous to, or rather a 
species of, free socage. Perhaps before the grant they might 
correspond to modern copyholders. It is of some importance 
to observe that the lord, by such a grant of the town in fee- 
farm, whatever we may think of its previous condition, di- 
vested himself of his property, or lucrative dominion over the 
soil, in return for the perpetual rent ; so that tallages subse- 
quently set at his own discretion upon the inhabitants, how- 
ever common, can hardly be considered as a just exercise of 
the rights of proprietorship. 

Under such a system of arbitrary taxation, however, it was 
evident to the most selfish tyrant that the wealth of his bur- 
gesses was his wealth, and their prosperity his interest ; much 
more were liberal and sagacious monarchs, like Henry II., 
inclined to encourage them by privileges. From the time of 
AVilliani Eufus there was no reign in which charters were not 
granted to ditt'erent towns of exemption from tolls on rivers 
and at markets — those lighter manacles of feudal tyranny ; 
or of commercial franchises ; or of immunity from the ordinary 
jurisdictions; or, lastly, of internal self-regulation. Thus the 
original charter of Henry I. to the city of London concedes 
to the citizens, in addition to valuable commercial and fiscal 
immunities, the right of choosing their own sheriff and justice, 
to the exclusion of every foreign jurisdiction. These grants, 
however, were not in general so extensive till the reign of 
John. Before that time the interior arrangement of towns 
had received a new organization. In the Saxon j^eriod we find 
voluntary associations, sometimes religious, sometimes secular ; 
in some cases for mutual defence against injury, in others for 
mutual relief in poverty. These were called guilds, from the 
Saxon word gildan, to pay or contribute, and exhibited the nat- 
ural, if not the legal, character of cor2:»orations. At the time 
of the Conquest, sucli voluntary incorporations of the bur- 
gesses possessed in some towns either landed property of their 
own, or rights of superiority over that of others. An internal 
elective government seems to hnve been required for the 
administration of a common revenue, and of other business 



Englisu Const. PROSPERITY OF EXGLISII TOWNS. 443 

incident to their association. Tliey became more numerous 
and more peculiarly commercial after that era, as well from 
the increase of trade as through imitation of similar fraterni- 
ties existing in many towns of France. The spirit of monopoly 
gave strength to those institutions, each class of traders form- 
ing itself, into a body, in order to exclude competition. Thus 
were established the companies in corporate towns, that of 
the Weavers in London being perhaps the earliest ; and these 
were successively consolidated and sanctioned by charters 
from the crown. In toAvns not large enough to admit of dis- 
tinct companies, one merchant guild comprehended the traders 
in general, or the chief of them ; and this, from the reign of 
Henry II. downward, became the subject of incorporating 
charters. The management of their internal concerns, previ- 
ously to any incorporation, fell naturally enough into a sort of 
oligarchy, which the tenor of the charter generally preserved. 
Though the immunities might be very extensive, the powers 
were more or less restrained to a small number. Except in a 
few places, the right of choosing magistrates was first given 
by King John ; and certainly must rather be ascribed to his 
poverty than to any enlarged policy, of which he was utterly 
incapable. 

§ 8. From the middle of the twelfth century to that of the 
thirteenth, the traders of England became more and more 
prosperous. The towns on the southern coast exported tin 
and other metals in exchange for the wines of France ; those 
on the eastern sent corn to Norway ; the Cinque Ports bar- 
tered wool against the stuffs of Flanders. Though bearing 
no comparison with the cities of Italy or the Empire, they 
increased sufficiently to acquire importance at home. That 
vigorous prerogative of the Norman monarchs which kept 
down the feudal aristocracy compensated for whatever inferi- 
ority there might be in the population and defensible strengtli 
of the English towns, compared with those on the Continent. 
They had to fear no petty oppressors — no local hostility ; and, 
if they could satisfy the rapacity of the crown, were secure 
from all other grievances. London, far above the rest — our 
ancient and noble capital — might, even in those early times, 
be justly termed a member of the political system. This 
great city, so admirably situated, was rich and populous long 
before the Conquest. Bede, at the beginning of the eighth 
century, speaks of London as a great market, which traders 
frequented by land and sea. It paid £15,000 out of £82,000 
raised by Canute upon the kingdom. If we believe Roger 



444 PEOSPEIIITY OF ENGLLSH TOWNS. Cii. Vlll. Pt. III. 

Hoveden, the citizens of London, on the death of Ethelred 
II., joined with part of the nobility in raising Edmnnd Iron- 
side to the throne; Harold I., according to better authority — 
the Saxon Chronicle and William of Malmsbury — was elected 
by their concurrence. Descending to later history, we find 
them active in the civil war of Stephen and Matilda. The 
famous Bishop of Winchester tells the Londoners that they 
are almost accounted as noblemen on account of the greatness 
of their city — into the community of which it appears that 
some barons had been received. Indeed, the citizens them- 
selves, or at least the principal of them, were called barons. 
It was certainly by far the greatest city in England. There 
have been different estimates of its population, some of which 
are extravagant ; but I think it could hardly have contained 
less than thirty or forty thousand souls within its walls, and 
the suburbs were very populous. These numbers, the enjoy- 
ment of privileges, and the consciousness of strength, infused 
a free and even a mutinous spirit into their conduct. The 
Loudoners were always on the barons' side in their contests 
with the crown. They bore a part in deposing William Long- 
champ, the chancellor and justiciary of Richard L They were 
distinguished in the great struggle for Magna Charta — the 
privileges of their city are expressly confirmed in it, and the 
Mayor of London was one of the twenty-five barons to whom 
the maintenauce of its provisions was delegated. In the sub- 
sequent reign the citizeus of London were regarded with much 
dislike and jealousy by the court, and sometimes suffered 
pretty severely at its hands, especially after the battle of 
Evesham. 

Notwithstanding the influence of London in these seasons 
of disturbance, we do not perceive that it was distinguished 
from the most insignificant town by greater participation in 
national councils. Eicli, powerful, honorable, and high-spirited 
as its citizens had become, it was very long before they found 
a regular place in Parliament. The prerogative of imposing 
tallages at pleasure, unsparingly exercised by Henry IIL, even 
over London, left the crown no inducement to summon the 
inhabitants of cities and boroughs. As these, indeed, were 
daily growing more considerable, they were certain, in a mon- 
archy so limited as that of England became in the thirteenth 
century, of attaining, sooner or later, this eminent privilege. 
Although, therefore, the object of Simon de Montfort in calling 
them to his Parliament, after the battle of Lewes, was merely 
to strengthen his own faction, which prevailed among the 



English Const. DEPUTIES FROM BOROUGHS. 445 

commonalty, yet their permanent admission into the Legislature 
may be ascribed to a more general cause ; for otherwise it is 
not easy to see why the innovation of an usurper should have 
been drawn into precedent, though it might, perhaps, accelerate 
what the course of affairs was gradually i)rei)aring. 

§ 9. It is well known that the earliest writs of summons to 
cities and boroughs, of which we can prove the existence, are 
those of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, bearing date 
12th of December, 1264, in the forty-ninth year of Henry III. 
(See page 558.) After a long controversy, almost all judicious 
inquirers seem to have acquiesced in admitting this origin of 
popular representation. The argument may be very concisely 
stated : we find, from innumerable records, that the king im- 
posed tallages upon his demesne towns at discretion. No 
public instrument, previous to the forty-ninth of Henry III., 
names the citizens and burgesses as constituent parts of I'arlia- 
ment, though prelates, barons, knights, and sometimes free- 
holders, are enumerated ; while, since the undoubted admission 
of the Commons, they are almost invariably mentioned. No 
historian speaks of representatives appearing for the people, 
or uses the word citizen or burgess in describing those present 
in Parliament. Such convincing, though negative, evidence is 
not to be invalidated by some general and ambiguous phrases, 
whether in writs and records or in historians. Those monkish 
annalists are poor authorities upon any point where their 
language is to be delicately measured. But it is hardly pos- 
sible that, writing circumstantially, as Eoger de Hoveden and 
Matthew Paris sometimes did, concerning proceedings in Par- 
liament, they could have failed to mention the Commons in 
unequivocal expressions, if any representatives from that order 
had actually formed a part of tlie assembly. 

§ 10. There is no great difficulty in answering the question 
why the deputies of boroughs were tinally and permanently 
iugrafted upon Parliament by Edward I. The Government was 
becoming constantly more attentive to the wealth that commerce 
brought into the kingdom, and the towns were becoming more 
flourishing and more independent. But chiefly there was a 
much stronger spirit of general liberty, and a greater discontent 
at violent acts of prerogative from the era of Magna Charta ; 
after which authentic recognition of free principles, many acts 
which had seemed before but the regular exercise of authority 
were looked upon as infringements of the subject's right. 
Among tliese, the custom of setting tallages at discretion would 
naturally appear the most intolerable ; and men were unwilling 



446 DEPUTIES FliOM BOKOUGHS. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

to remember that the burgesses who paid them were indebted 
for the rest of their possessions to the bounty of the crown. 
In Edward I.'s reign, even before the great act of Confirmation 
of the Charters had rendered arbitrary impositions absolutely 
unconstitutional, they might, perhaps, excite louder murmurs 
than a discreet administration would risk. Though the neces- 
sities of the king, therefore, and his imperious temper often led 
him to this course, it was a more prudent counsel to try the 
willingness of his people before he forced their reluctance. 
And the success of his innovation rendered it worth repetition. 
Whether it were from the complacency of the Commons at be- 
ing thus admitted among the peers of the realm, or from a per- 
suasion that the king would take their money if they refused 
it, or from inability to withstand the plau.sible reasons of his 
ministers, or from the private influence to which the leaders of 
every ])opular assembly have been accessil)le, much more was 
granted in subsidies after the representation of the towns com- 
menced than had ever been extorted in tallages. 

To grant money was, therefore, the main object .of their 
meeting ; and if the exigencies of the administration could have 
been relieved without subsidies, the citizens and burgesses 
might still have sat at home and obeyed the laws which a coun- 
cil of prelates and barons enacted for their government. But 
it is a difficult question whether the king and the peers designed 
to make room for them, as it were, in legislation ; and whether 
the power of the purse drew after it immediately, or only by 
degrees, those indispensable rights of consenting to laws which 
they now possess. There are no sufficient means of solving 
this doubt during the reign of Edward I. ;'' but it must be highly 
questional)le whether the Commons, who had so recently taken 
their place in Parliament, gave anything more than a construc- 
tive assent to the laws enacted during this reign. They are not 
even named in the preamble of any statute till the last year of 
Edward I. Upon more than one occasion the sheriffs were 

' The writ in 22 Edward I. directs two knights to be chosen " cum plena potestate 
pro se et tota conimunitate coniitatfls prjedicti ad consulenduin ct consentieuduni pro 
se et cuininunitate ilia, his rjiia:? coniites, burones, et proceres prjedicti concorditer 
ordinaveiiiit in pneniissis." I luit of the next year runs, " ad faciendum tunc quod 
de communi consilio ordinabitur in prsmissis." The same words are inserted in the 
writ of 26 Edward I. In tliat of 2f< Edward I. the knights are directed to be sent " cum 
l)lena potestate audiendi et faciendi quae ibidem ordinari contigerent pro communi 
coTTiniodo." Several others of tlie sniiie reign have the words " ad faciendum." The 
difficulty is to pronounce wliether this term is to be interpreted in the sense of per- 
formiiKi or of emicting; whether llie representatives of the Commons were merely to 
iearu from the f/ords what was to be done, or to bear their part in advising upon it. 
The earliest writ, that of 22 Edward I., certainly implies the latter; and I do not 
know that any of the rest are conclusive to the contrary. In the reign of Edward II. 
the words " ad ronsentiendum " alone, or " ad faciendum et consentiendum," begin; 
and from that of Edward III. this form has been constantly used. 



English Const. DIVISION" OF PARLIAMENT, 447 

directed to return the same members who had sat in the hist 
Parliament, unless prevented l)y death or inhrmity. 

§ 11. It has been a very prevailing opinion that Parliament 
was not divided into two houses at the first admission of the 
Commons. If by this is only meant that the Commons did not 
occupy a separate chamber till some time in the reign of 
Edward III., the proposition, true or false, will be of little im- 
portance. They may have sat at the bottom of Westminster 
Hall, while the Lords occupied the upper end. But tliat they 
were ever intermingled m voting appears inconsistent with like- 
lihood and authority. The usual object of calling a Parliament 
was to imjDOse taxes ; and these, for many years after the in- 
troduction of the Commons, were laid in different proportions 
upon the three estates of the realm. Thus, in 23 Edward I., 
the earls, barons, and knights gave the king an eleventh, the 
clergy a tenth ; while he obtained a seventh from the citizens 
and burgesses : in the twenty-fourth of the same king the two 
former of these orders gave a twelfth, the last an eighth : in 
the thirty-third year a thirtieth was the grant of the barons 
and knights and of the clergy, a twentieth of the cities and 
towns. In the first of Edward II. the counties paid a twen- 
tieth, the towns a fifteenth. In the sixth of Edward III. the 
rates were a fifteenth and a tenth. These distinct grants imply 
distinct grantors ; for it is not to be imagined that the Commons 
intermeddled in those affecting the Lords, or the Lords in those 
of the Commons. In fact, however, there is abundant proof of 
their separate existence long before the seventeenth of Edward 
III., which is the epoch assigned by Carte, or even the sixth of 
that king, which has been chosen by some other writers. Thus 
the Commons sat at Acton Burnell in the eleventh of Edward I., 
while the upper house was at Shrewsbury. In the eighth of 
Edward II. "the Commons of England complain to the king 
and his council," etc. These must surely have been the Com- 
mons assembled in Parliament, for who else could thus have 
entitled themselves ? In the nineteenth of the same king Ave 
find several petitions, evidently proceeding from the body of the 
Commons in Parliament, and com})laining of public grievances. 

As the knights of shires correspond to the lower nobility 
of other feudal countries, we have less cause to be surprised 
that they belonged originally to the same branch of Parlia- 
ment as tlie barons, tlian at their subsequent intermixture 
with men so inferior in station as the citizens and burgesses. 
It is by no means easy to define the point of time when this 
distribution was settled ; but I think it may be inferred from 



448 EDWARD III. Chap. VIII. Part III. 

the rolls of Parliament that the houses were divided as they 
are at present in the eighth, ninth, and nineteenth years of 
Edward II. This appears, however, beyond doubt in the 
first of Edward III. Yet in the sixth of the same prince, 
though the knights and burgesses are expressly mentioned to 
have consulted together, the former taxed themselves in a 
smaller rate of subsidy than the hitter. 

§ 12. The proper business of the House of Commons was 
to petition for redress of grievances, as much as to provide 
for the necessities of the crown. In the prudent fiction of 
English law no wrong is supposed to proceed from the 
source of right. The throne is fixed upon a pinnacle which 
perpetual beams of truth and justice irradiate, though cor- 
ruption and partiality may occupy the middle region and 
cast their chill shade upon all below. In his high court of 
Parliament a king of England was to learn where injustice 
had been unpunished and where right had been delayed. 
The common courts of law, if they were sufficiently honest, 
were not sufficiently strong, to redress the subject's injuries 
where the officers of the crown or the nobles interfered. To 
Parliament he looked as the great remedial court for relief 
of ])rivate as well as public grievances. For this cause it was 
ordained in the fifth of Edward II. that the king should hold 
a Parliament once, or if necessary, twice every year; "that 
the pleas which have been thus delayed, and those where the 
justices have differed, may be brought to a close." And a short 
act of 4 Edward III., which was not very strictly regarded, 
provides that a Parliament shall be held " every year, or 
oftener, if need be." By what persons, and under what limi- 
tations, this jurisdiction in Parliament was exercised will come 
under our future consideration. 

The efficacy of a king's personal character in so imperfect 
a state of government was never more strongly exemplified 
than in the two first Edwai'ds. The father, a little before his 
death, had humbled his boldest opponents among the nobility ; 
and as for the Commons, so far from claiming a right of 
remonstrating, we have seen cause to doubt whether they 
were accounted effectual members of the legislature for any 
purposes but taxation. lUit in the very second year of the 
son's reign they granted tlie twenty-fifth penny of their goods, 
" upon this condition, that the king should take advice and 
grant redress upon certain articles wherein they are aggrieved." 
These were answered at the ensuing Parliament, and are 
entered with the king's respective promises of redress upon 



English Const. EDWARD III. 449 

the roll. It will be worth while to extract part of this 
record, that we may see what were the complaints of the 
Commons of England, and their notions of right, in 1309. 

" The good people of the kingdom who are come hither to 
Parliament pray our lord the king that he will, if it please 
him, have regard to his poor subjects, who are much ag- 
grieved by reason that they are not governed as they should 
be, especially as to the articles of the Great Charter ; and 
for this, if it please him, they pray remedy. Besides which, 
they pray their lord the king to hear what has long ag- 
grieved his people, and still does so from day to day, on the 
part of those who call themselves his officers, and to amend 
it, if he pleases." The articles, eleven in number, are to the 
following purport : 1. That the king's surveyors seize great 
quantities of victuals without payment ; 2. That new cus- 
toms are set on wine, cloth, and other imposts ; 3. That the 
current coin is not so good as formerly ; 4, 5. That the stew- 
ard and marshal enlarge their jurisdiction beyond measure, 
to the oppression of the people ; 6. That the commons find 
none to receive petitions addressed to the council ; 7. That the 
collectors of the king's dues (pernours des prises) in towns and 
at fairs take more than is lawful ; 8. That men are delayed 
in their civil suits by writs of protection ; 9. That felons es- 
cape punishment by procuring charters of pardon ; 10. That 
the constables of the king's castles take cognizance of com- 
mon pleas ; 11. That the king's escheators oust men of lands 
held by good title, under pretence of an inquest of office. 

These articles display in a short compass the nature of those 
grievances which existed under almost all the princes of the 
Plantagenet dynasty, and are spread over the rolls of Parlia- 
ment for moi-e than a century after this time. Edward gave 
the amplest assurances of putting an end to them all, except 
in one instance, the augmented customs on imports, to whicli 
he answered, rather evasively, that he would take them off 
till he should perceive whether himself and his peo|)le derived 
advantage from so doing, and act thereupon as he should be 
advised. Accordingly, the next year, he issued writs to collect 
these new customs again. Put the Lords Ordainers superseded 
the writs, having entirely abrogated all illegal impositions. It 
does not ai)i)ear, however, that, regard had to the times, there 
was anything very tyrannical in Edward's government. He 
set tallages sometimes, like his father, on his demesne towns, 
without assent of Parliament. In the nineteenth year of his 
reign the Commons show that, " Whereas we and our ancestors 



450 ILLEGALITY OF RAISING Chap. VIII. Part hi. 

have given many tallages to the king's ancestors to obtain the 
charter of the forest, which charter we have had contirmed by 
the present king, paying him largely on our part; yet the 
king's officers of the forest seize on lands, and destroy ditches, 
and oppress the people, for which they pray remedy, for the 
sake of God and his father's soul." They complain at the same 
time of arbitrary imprisonment, against the law of the land. 
To both these petitions the king returned a promise of redress ; 
and they complete the catalogue of customary grievances in this 
period of our constitution. 

During tlie reign of Edward II. the rolls of Parliament are 
imperfect, and we have not much assistance from other sources. 
The assent of the Commons, which frequently is not specified 
in the statutes of this age, appears in a remarkable and revolu- 
tionary proceeding, the appointment of the Lords Ordainers in 
1312. In this case it indicates that the aristocratic party then 
combined against the crown were desirous of conciliating pop- 
rdarity. An historian relates that some of the Commons were 
consulted upon the ordinances to be made for the reformation 
of government. 

§ 13. During the long and prosperous reign of Edward III. 
the efforts of Parliament in behalf of their country were re- 
warded with success in establishing upon a firm footing three 
essential principles of our Government — the illegality of 
raising money without consent ; the necessity that the two 
houses should concur for any alterations in the law ; and, 
lastly, the right of the Commons to inquire into public abuses, 
and to impeach public counsellors. By exhibiting proofs of 
each of these from Parliamentary records I shall be able to 
substantiate the progressive improvement of our free constitu- 
tion, which was principally consolidated during the reigns of 
Edward III. and his two next successors. 

I. IllegaUtij of raisinf/ Monei/ lalthont Consent. — In the 
sixth year of Eclward III. a Parliament was called to provide 
for the emergency of an Irish rebellion, wherein, " because the 
king could not send troops and money to Ireland without the 
aid of his people, the prelates, earls, barons, and other great 
men, and the knights of shire, and all the Commons, of their 
free will, for the said purpose, and also in order that the king 
might live of his own, and not vex his peoj>le by excessive 
prizes, nor in other manner, grant to him the fifteenth penny, 
to levy of the commons,^ and the tenth from the cities, toAvns, 

8 " La commonaltee " srenis in this place to mean tlie tenants of land, or commons 
of the counties, in contradistinction to citizens and burgesses. 



English Const. MONEY WITHOUT CONSENT. 451 

and royal demesnes. And the Icing at the re(|iiest of the same, 
in ease of his people, grants that the commissions lately made 
to certain persons assigned to set tallages on cities, towns, and 
demesnes throughout England shall be immediately repealed ; 
and that in time to come he will not set such tallage, except as 
it has been done in the time of his ancestors, and he may 
reasonably do." 

These concluding words are of dangerous implication ; and 
certainly it was not the intention of Edward, inferior to none 
of his predecessors in the love of power, to divest himself of 
that eminent prerogative which, however illegally since the 
Contirmatio Chartarum, had been exercised by them all. But 
the I'arliament took no notice of this reservation, and con- 
tinued with unshaken perseverance to insist on this incon- 
testable and fundamental right, wliich he was prone enough to 
violate. 

In the thirteenth year of this reign the Lords and Commons 
gave their answer to commissioners sent to open the Parliament, 
and to treat Avith them on the king's part, in separate sealed 
rolls. The Commons declared that they could grant no subsidy 
without consulting their constituents ; and therefore begged 
that another Parliament might be summoned, and in the mean- 
time they would endeavor, by using persuasion with the people 
of their respective counties, to procure the grant of a reasonable 
aid in the next Parliament. They demanded also that the im- 
position on wool and lead should be taken as it used to be in 
former times, " inasmuch as it is enhanced without assent of 
the Commons, or of the Lords, as we understand; and if it be 
otherwise demanded, that any one of the Commons may refuse 
it without being troubled on that account." 

Wool, liowever, the staple export of that age, was too easy 
and tempting a prey to be relinquished by a prince engaged in 
an impoverishing war. Seven 3'ears afterwards, in 20 Edward 
III., we find the Commons praying that the great sul)sidy of 
forty shillings upon the sack of wool be taken oft'; and the old 
custom paid as heretofore was assented to and granted. The 
Government spoke this time in a more authoritative tone. 
" As to this point," the answer runs, " the prelates and others, 
seeing in what need the king stood of an aid before his passage 
beyond sea, to recover his rights and defend his kingdom of 
England, consented, with the concurrence of the merchants, 
that he shovdd have in aid of his said war, and in defence 
of his said kingdom, forty shillings of subsidy for each sack of 
wool that should be exported beyond sea for two years to 



452 CONCURRENCE OF BOTH HOUSES Chap. YIIT. Part III. 

come. And upon this grant divers merchants have made 
many advances to our lord the king in aid of his war ; for 
which cause this subsidy cannot be repealed without assent of 
the king and his lords." 

It is probable that Edward's counsellors wished to establish 
a distinction, long afterwards revived by those of James I., 
between customs levied on merchandise at the ports and in- 
ternal taxes. The statute entitled Contirmatio Chartarum had 
manifestly taken away the prerogative of imposing the latter, 
which, indeed, had never extended beyond the tenants of the 
royal demesne. But its language was not quite so explicit as 
to the former, although no reasonable doubt could be enter- 
tained that the intention of the legislature was to abrogate 
every species of imposition unauthorized by Parliament. The 
thirtieth section of Magna Charta had provided that foreign 
mercliants should be free from all tributes except the ancient 
customs ; and it Avas strange to suppose that natives were ex- 
cluded from the benefit of that enactment. Yet, owing to the 
ambiguous and elliptical style so frequent in our older laws, 
this was open to dispute, and could, perhaps, only be explained 
by usage. Edward I., in despite of both tliese statutes, had 
set a duty of threepence in the pound upon goods imi)orted by 
merchant-strangers. This imposition was noticed as a griev- 
ance in the tliird year of his successor, and repealed by the 
Lords Ordainers. It was revived, however, by Edward III., 
and continued to be levied ever afterwards. 

Edward was led by the necessities of his unjust and expen- 
sive war into another arbitrary encroachment, of which we 
find as many complaints as of his pecuniary extortions. The 
Commons pray, in the same Parliament of 20 Edward III., 
that commissions should not issue for the future out of chan- 
cery to charge the people with providing men-at-arms, hobelers 
(or light cavalry), archers, victuals, or in any other manner, 
without consent of Parliament. The king in reply alleges 
absolute necessity ; and the roll of Parliament in the next two 
years, the 21st and 22(1 of Edward III., is full of the same 
complaints on one side, and the same allegations of necessity 
on the other. In the latter year the Commons grant a sub- 
sidy, on condition that no illegal levying of money should take 
place, with several other remedial provisions ; " and that these 
conditions should be entered on the roll of Parliament, as a 
matter of record, by which they may have remedy, if any 
thing should be attempted to the contrary in time to come." 
From this year the complaints of extortion became rather 



English Const. IIS" LEGISLATION NECESSARY. 453 

less frequent ; and soon afterwards a statute was passed, 
" that no man shall be constrained to find men-at-arms, hobe- 
lers, nor archers, other than those which hold by such services, 
if it be not by common assent and grant made in Parliament." 
■ II. The Concurrence of both Houses in Legislation neces- 
sary. — The second constitutional principle established in the 
reign of Edward III. was tliat the king and two houses of 
Parliament, in conjunction, possessed exclusively the right 
of legislation. Laws were now declared to be made by the king 
at the request of the Commons, and by the assent of the lords 
and prelates. Such at least was the general form, though for 
many subsequent ages there was no invariable regularity in 
this respect. The Commons, who till this reign were rarely 
mentioned, were now as rarely omitted in the enacting clause. 
In fact, it is evident from the rolls of Parliament that statutes 
were almost always founded upon their petition. These peti- 
tions, with the respective answers made to them in the king's 
name, were drawn up after the end of the session in the form 
of laws, and entered upon the statute-roll. But here it must 
be remarked tliat the petitions were often extremely qualified 
and altered by the answer, insomuch that many statutes of 
this and some later reigns by no means express the true sense 
of the Commons. Sometimes they contented themselves with 
showing their grievance, and praying remedy from tlie king 
and his council. Of this one eminent instance is the great 
statute of treasons. In the petition whereon this act is 
founded it is merely prayed that, " whereas the king's justices 
in different counties adjudge persons indicted before them to 
be traitors for sundry matters not known by the Commons 
to be treason, it would please the king by his council, and by 
the great and wise men of the land, to declare what are 
treasons in this present Parliament." The answer to this 
petition contains the existing statute, as a declaration on the 
king's part. But there is no appearance that it received the 
direct assent of the lower house. In the next reign we shall 
find more remarkable instances of assuming a consent wliich 
was never positively given. 

The statute of treasons, however, was supposed to be de- 
claratory of the ancient law : in permanent and material in- 
novations a more direct concurrence of all the estates was 
proba))ly required. A new statute, to be perpetually incor- 
porated with the law of England, was regarded as no light 
matter. It was a very common answer to a petition of the 
Commons, in the early part of this reign, that it could not be 



454 STATUTES DISTINGUISHED Chap. VIII. Part III. 

granted witliout making a new law. After the Parliament 
of 14 Edward III. a certain number of prelates, barons, and 
counsellors, with twelve knights and six burgesses, were ap- 
pointed to sit from day to day in order to turn such peti- 
tions and answers as were fit to be perpetual into a statute ; 
biit for such as were of a temporary nature the king issued 
his letters patent. This reluctance to innovate without ne- 
cessity, and to swell the number of laws which all were bound 
to know and obey with an accumulation of transitory enact- 
ments, led apparently to the distinction between statutes 
and ordinances. The latter are indeed defined by some 
lawyers to be regulations proceeding from the king and Lords 
witliout concurrence of the Commons. But if this be appli- 
cable to some ordinances, it is certain that the word, even 
when opposed to statute, with which it is often synonymous, 
sometimes denotes an act of the whole legislature. In the 
37th of Edward III., when divers sumptuary regulations 
against excess of apparel were made in full Parliament, 
" it was demanded of the Lords and Commons, inasmuch as 
the matter of their petitions was novel and unheard of before, 
whether they would have them granted by way of ordinance 
or of statute. They ansAvei-ed tliat it would be best to have 
them by the way of ordinance and not of statute, in order that 
any thing which should need amendment might be amended 
at the next Parliament." So much scruple did they enter- 
tain about tampering with the statute law of the land. 

Ordinances which, if it were not for their partial or tem- 
porary operation, could not well be distinguished from laws,® 
Avere often established in great councils. These assemblies, 
which frequently occurred in Edward's reign, were hardly 
distinguishable, except in name, from Parliaments; being 
constituted not only of those who were regularly summoned 
to the House of Lords, but of deputies from counties, cities, 
and boroughs. Several places that never returned burgesses 
to Parliament, have sent deputies to some of these councils. 
The most remarkable of these was that held in the 27th 
of Edward III., consisting of one knight for each county, 
and of two citizens or burgesses from every city or borough 
wherein the ordinances of the staple were established. 
These were ])reviously agreed upon by the king and Lords, 
and copies given, one to the knights, another to the burgesses. 

9 " If there be any difference between !\n ordinance and a statute, as some have 
collected, it is but only this, that an ordinance is but temporary till coniimied and 
made perpetual, but a statute is perpetual at first, and so Iiave some ordinances also 
been." — Wliitelocke on Parliamentary Writ, vol. ii., p. 297. 



English Const. FliOM ORDINANCES. 455 

The roll tells us that they gave their opinion in writing to 
the council, after much deliberation, and that this was read 
and discussed by the great men. These ordinances fix the 
staple of wool in particular places within England, prohibit 
English merchants from exporting that article under pain 
of death, inflict sundry other penalties, create jurisdictions, 
and in short have the effect of a new and important law. 
After they were passed, the deputies of the Commons granted 
a subsidy for three years, complained of grievances, and 
received answers, as if in a regular Parliament. But they 
were aware that these proceedings partook of some irregu- 
larity, and endeavored, as was their constant method, to 
keep up the legal forms of the constitution. In the last 
petition of this council the Commons pray, " because many 
articles touching the state of the king and common profit 
of his kingdom have been agreed by him, the prelates. 
Lords, and Commons of his land, at this council, that the 
said articles may be recited at the next Parliament, and 
entered upon the roll ; for this cause, that ordinances and 
agreements made in council are not of record, as if they 
had been made in a general Parliament." This, accordingly, 
was done at the ensuing Parliament, whd»n these ordinances 
were expressly confirmed, and directed to be '* holden for 
a statute to endure always." 

It must be confessed that the distinction between ordinances 
and statutes is very obscure, and perhaps no precise and uni- 
form principle can be laid down about it. But it sufficiently 
appears that whatever provisions altered the common law or 
any former statute and were entered upon the statute-roll, 
transmitted to the sheriffs, and promulgated to tlie people as 
general enactments, were holden to require the positive assent 
of both houses of Parliament, duly and formally summoned. 

Before we leave this subject it will be pro])er to take notice 
of a remarkable stretch of prerogative which, if drawn into 
precedent, Avould have effectually subverted this principle of 
parliamentary consent in legislation. In the 15th of Edward 
III. petitions were presented of a bolder and more innovating 
cast than was acceptable to the court : that no peer should be 
put to answer for any trepass except before his peers ; that 
commissioners should be assigned to examine the accounts of 
such as had received public moneys ; that the judges and 
ministers should be sworn to observe the Great Charter and 
other laws ; and that they should be appointed in Parliament. 
The last of these was probably the most obnoxious ; but the 



45G EIGHT OF COMMONS Chap. VIII. Part III. 

king, unwilling to defer a supply which was granted merely 
upon condition that these petitions should prevail, suffered 
them to ])ass into a statute with an alteration which did not 
take oft' much from their efficacy — namely, that these officers 
should indeed be appointed by the king with the advice of his 
council, but should surrender their charges at the next Parlia- 
ment, and be there responsible to any who should have cause 
of complaint against them. The chancellor, treasurer, and 
judges entered their protestation that they had not assented 
to the said statutes, nor could they observe them, in case they 
should prove contrary to the laws and customs of the kingdom, 
which they were sworn to maintain. This is the first instan(;e 
of a protest on the roll of Parliament against the passing of 
an act. Nevertheless they were compelled to swear on the 
cross of Canterbury to its observance. 

This excellent statute was attem])ted too early for complete 
success. Edward's ministers plainly saw that it left them at 
the mercy of future Parliaments, who would readily learn 
the wholesome and constitutional principle of sparing tlie 
sovereign while they punished his advisers. They had re- 
course, therefore, to a violent measure, but which was likely 
in those times to 'be endured. By a proclamation addressed 
to all the sheriffs the king revokes and annuls the statut(^ as 
contrary to the laws and customs of England and to his own 
just rights and prerogatives, which he had sworn to preserve ; 
declaring that he had never consented to its passing, but, hav- 
ing previously protested that he would revoke it, lest the 
Parliament should have been separated in wrath, had dissem- 
bled, as was his duty, and permitted the great seal to be 
affixed; and that it appeared to the earls, barons, and other 
learned persons of his kingdom with whom he had consulted, 
that, as the said statute had not proceeded from his own good- 
will, it was null, and could not have the name or force of law. 
This revocation of a statute, as the price of which a subsidy 
had been granted, was a gross infringement of law, and un- 
doubtedly passed for such as that time ; for the right was 
already clear, though the remedy was not always attainable. 
Two years afterwards Edward met his Parliament, when that 
obnoxious statute was formally repealed. 

Notwithstanding the king's unwillingness to permit this 
control of Parliament over his administration, he suffered, or 
rather solicited, their interference in matters which have since 
been reckoned the exclusive province of the crown. This was 
an unfair trick of his policy. He was desirous, in order to 



English Const. TO INQUIRE INTO ABUSES. 457 

prevent any murmuring about subsidies, to throw the war ujjon 
Parliament as tlieir own act, though none could have been 
commenced more selfishly for his own benefit, or less for the 
advantage of the people of England. It is called " the war 
which our lord the king has undertaken against his adversary 
of France, by common assent of all the Lords and Commons 
of his realm in divers parliaments." And he several times 
referred it to them to advise upon the subject of peace. But 
the Commons showed their humility or discretion by treating 
this as an invitation wliich it would show good manners to de- 
cline, though in the eighteentli of the king's reign they had 
joined with the Lords in imploring the king to make an end 
of the war by a battle or by a suitable peace. 

III. Right of the Comvions to lnqui7-e into Puhlic Abuses. 
— A third important accpiisition of the House of Commons 
during this reign was the establishment of their right to in- 
vestigate and cliastise the abuses of administratiou. 

The most memorable example of the exercise of this riglit 
occurred in the fiftieth of Edward III. It will be remembered 
by every one who has read our history that in the latter years 
of Edward's life his fame was tarnished by the ascendency of 
the Duke of Lancaster and Alice Ferrers. The former, a man 
of more ambition than his capacity seems to have warranted, 
even incurred the suspicion of meditating to set aside the heir 
of the crown when the Black Frince should have sunk into the 
grave. Whether he were wronged or not by these conjectures, 
they certainly appear to have operated on those most con- 
cerned to take alarm at them. A Parliament met, in April, 
1376, wherein the general unpopularity of the king's adminis- 
tration, or the infiuence of the Frince of Wales, led to very 
remarkable consequences. 

The Commons alleged three particular grievances ; the re- 
moval of the staple from Calais, Avhere it had been fixed by 
Parliament, through the ])rocurement and advice of the pri- 
vate counsellors about the king ; the participation of the same 
persons in lending money to the king at exorbitant usury ; 
and their purchasing at a low rate, for their own benefit, old 
debts from the crown, the whole of which they had afterwards 
induced the king to repay to themselves. For these and for 
many more misdemeanors the Commons accused and impeached 
the lords Latimer and Nevil, with four merchants, Lyons, 
Ellis, Peachey, and Bury. Latimer had been chamberlain, and 
Nevil held another ottice. The former was the friend and 
creature of the Duke of Lancaster. Nor was this Parliament 



458 RICHARD III. Chap. VIII. Part III. 

at all nice in touching a point where kings least endure their 
interference. An ordinance was made that, " whereas many 
women prosecute the suits of others in courts of justice by 
way of maintenance, and to get profit thereby, which is dis- 
pleasing to the king, he forbids any woman henceforward, and 
especially Alice Ferrers, to do so, on pain of the said Alice 
forfeiting all her goods, and suffering banishment from the 
kingdom." 

The part which the Prince of Wales, who had ever been 
distinguished for his respectful demeanor towards Edward, 
bore in tliis unprecedented opposition, is strong evidence of 
the jealousy with which he regarded the Duke of Lancaster ; 
and it was led in the House of Commons by Peter de la Mare, 
a servant of the Earl of March, who, by his marriage with 
Philippa, heiress of Lionel, duke of Clarence, stood next after 
the young Prince Eichard in lineal succession to the croAvn. 
The proceedings of this session were, indeed, highly popular. 
But no House of Commons would have gone such lengths on 
the mere support of popular opinion, unless instigated and en- 
conraged by higher authority. Without this, their petitions 
might, i)erhaps, have obtained, for the sake of subsidy, an im- 
mediate consent ; but those who took the lead in preparing 
them must have remained unsheltered after dissolution, to 
abide the vengeance of the crown, with no assurance that an- 
other Parliament would espouse their cause as its own. Such, 
indeed, was their fate in the present instance. Soon after the 
dissolution of Parliament, the Prince of Wales, who, long 
sinking by fatal decay, had rallied his expiring energies for 
this domestic combat, left his inheritance to a child ten years 
old, Richard of Bordeaux. Immediately after this event Lan- 
caster recovered his influence, and the former favorites re- 
turned to court. Peter de la Mare was confined at Notting- 
ham, where he remained two years. The citizens, indeed, 
attempted an insurrection, and threatened to burn the Savoy, 
Lancaster's residence, if De la Mare were not released ; but 
the Bishop of London succeeded in appeasing them. A Par- 
liament met next year which overthrew the work of its prede- 
cessor, restored those who had been impeached, and repealed 
the ordinance against Alice Perrers. So little security will 
popular assemblies ever afford against arbitrary power, when 
deprived of regular leaders and the consciousness of mutual 
fidelity. 

The policy adopted by the I'rince of Wales and Earl of 
March, in employing the House of Commons as an engine 



English Const. CHARACTER OF RICIIAED II. 459 

of attack against an obnoxions ministry, was perfectly novel, 
and indicates a sensible change in the character of our consti- 
tution. In the reign of Edward II., Parliament had little 
share in resisting the Government ; much more was effected 
by the barons through risings of their feudal tenantry. Fifty 
years of authority better respected, of law better enforced, 
had rendered these more perilous, and of a more violent ap- 
pearance than formerly. A surer resource presented itself in 
the increased weight of the lower house in Parliament. And 
this indirect aristocratical influence gave a surprising impulse 
to that assembly, and particularly tended to establish beyond 
question its control over public abuses. It is no less just to 
remark that it also tended to preserve the relation and har- 
mony between each part and the other, and to prevent that 
jarring of emulation and jealousy which, though generally 
found in the division of power between a noble and a popular 
estate, has scarcely ever caused a dissension, except in cases 
of little moment, between our two houses of Parliament. 

§ 14. The Commons had sustained v/ith equal firmness and 
discretion a defensive war against arbitrary power under Ed- 
ward III. ; they advanced with very different steps towards 
his successor. Upon the king's death, though Richard's cor- 
onation took place without delay, and no proper regency was 
constituted, yet a council of twelve, whom the great officers 
of state were to obey, supplied its place to every effectual 
intent. Among these the Duke of Lancaster was not 
numbered, and he retired from court in some disgust. In 
the first Parliament of the young king a large proportion 
of the knights who had sat in that which impeached the 
Lancastrian party were returned. Peter de la Mare, now 
released from prison, was elected speaker. The prosecution 
against Alice Perrers was revived — not, as far as appears, 
by direct impeachment of the Commons ; but articles Avere 
exhibited against her in the House of Lords on the kin;;'s 
part, for breaking the ordinance made against her inter- 
meddling at court ; upon which she received judgment of 
banishment and forfeiture. At the request of the lower 
house, the Lords, in the king's name, appointed nine persons 
of different ranks — three bishops, two earls, two bannerets, 
and two bachelors — to be a permanent council about the 
king, so that no business of importance should be transacted 
without their unanimous consent. The king was even com- 
pelled to consent that, during his minority, the chancellor, 
treasurer, judges, and other chief officers should be made 



460 POWER OJ' RICHARD II. Chap. VIII. Paiit III. 

in Parliament ; by wliicli provision, combined witli tliat of 
the Parliamentary council, the whole executive government 
was transferred to the two houses. 

For the first few years of Eichard's reign we find from 
the rolls, repeated demands of subsidy on one side, remon- 
strance and endeavors at reformation on the other. But 
the power of the Commons steadily increases. After the 
tremendous insurrection of the villeins in 1382, a Parliament 
was convened to advise about repealing the charters of general 
manumission, extorted from the king by the pressure of 
circumstances. In this measure all concurred; but the 
Commons were not afraid to say that the late risings had 
been provoked by the burdens which a prodigal court had 
called for in the preceding session. 

Tlie character of Richard II. was now developing itself, 
and the hopes excited by his remarkable presence of mind 
in confronting tlie rioters on Blackheath were rapidly de- 
stroyed. Not that he was wanting in capacity, as has been 
sometimes imagined. Por if Ave measure intellectual power 
by the greatest exertion it ever displays, rather than by its 
average results, Pichard II. was a man of considerable talents. 
He possessed, along with much dissimulation, a decisive 
promptitude in seizing the critical moment for action. Of 
this quality, besides his celebrated behavior towards the 
insurgents, he gave striking evidence in several circumstances 
which we shall have shortly to notice. But his ordinary con- 
duct belied the abilities which on these rare occasions shone 
forth, and rendered them ineffectual for his security. Ex- 
treme pride and violence, with an inordinate partiality for 
the most worthless favorites, were his predominant charac- 
teristics. 

Though no king could be less respectable than Eichard, 
yet the constitution invested a sovereign with such ample 
prerogative, that it was far less easy to resist his personal 
exercise of power than the unsettled councils of a minority. 
Though the Commons did not relax in tlieir importunities for 
the redress of general grievances, they did not venture to 
intermeddle as before with the conduct of administration. 
They did not even object to the grant of the marquisate of 
Dublin, with almost a princely dominion over Ireland ; 
which enormous donation was confirmed by act of Parliament 
to Vere, a favorite of the king. A petition that the ofiicers 
of state should annually visit and inquire into his household 
was answered that the king would do what he pleased. 



English Const. COMMISSION OF IIEFORM. 461 

There is nothing, however, more deceitful to a monarch 
unsupported by an armed force, and destitute of wary ad- 
visers, tlian this submission of his people. A single effort 
was enough to overturn his government. l*arliament met 
in the tenth year of his reign, steadily determined to reform 
the administration, and especially to punish its chief leader, 
Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk and lord chancellor. 

The charges against this minister, without being wholly 
frivolous, were not so weighty as the clamor of the Commons 
might have led us to expect. Besides forfeiting all his 
grants from the croAvn, he was committed to prison, there 
to remain till he should have paid such fine as the king 
might impose — a sentence that would have been outrageously 
severe in many cases, though little more than nugatory in the 
present. 

This was the second precedent of that grand constitutional 
resource, Parliamentary impeachment ; and more remarkable, 
from the eminence of the person attacked, than that of Lord 
Latimer in the fiftieth year of Edward III. The Commons 
were content to waive the prosecution of any other ministers ; 
but they rather chose a scheme of reforming the administra- 
tion which should avert both the necessity of punishment 
and the malversations that provoked it. Tliey petitioned 
the king to ordain in Parliament certain chief officers of 
his council, with power to reform those abuses by which 
his crown was so much blemished that the laws were not 
kept, and his revenues were dilapidated, confirming by a 
statute a commission for a year, and forbidding, under heavy 
penalties, any one from o]>posing, in private or openly, what 
they should advise. With this the king complied, and a 
commission founded upon the prayer of Parliament, was 
established by statute. It comprehended fourteen persons 
of the highest eminence for rank and general estimation ; 
princes of the blood and ancient servants of the crown, by 
whom its prerogatives were not likely to be unnecessarily 
impaired. Still, the design as well as tendency of this 
commission was no doubt to throw the whole administra- 
tion into their hands during the period of their sway. 

Many have exclaimed against this Pa,rliamentary commis- 
sion as an unwarrantable violation of the king's sovereignty, 
and even impartial men are struck at first sight by a measure 
that seems to overset the natural balance of our constitution. 
P)ut it would be unfair to blame either those concerned in this 
commission, some of Avhose names at least have been handed 



462 ANSWERS TO RICHAED'S QUESTIONS. Ch. VIll. Pt. III. 

down with unquestioned respect, or those high-spirited repre- 
sentatives of the people whose patriot firmness has been hitherto 
commanding all our sympathy and gratitude, unless we could 
distinctly pronounce by what gentler means they could restrain 
the excesses of government. Thirteen Parliaments had already 
met since the accession of Richard ; in all the same remon- 
strances had been repeated, and the same promises renewed. 
Subsidies, more frequent than iii any former reign, had been 
granted for the supposed exigencies of the Avar ; but this Avas 
no longer illuminated by those dazzling A'ictories Avhich give to 
fortune the mien of wisdom : the coasts of England Avere per- 
petually ra\'aged, and her trade destroyed, Avhile tiie adminis- 
tration incurred the suspicion of diverting to private uses that 
treasure Avhich they so feebly and vnisuccessfully applied to 
public service. No voice of his people, until it spoke in thun- 
der, would stop an intoxicated boy in the Avasteful career of 
dissipation. He loved festivals and pageants, the prevailing 
folly of his time, Avith unusual frivolity ; and his ordinary 
living is represented as beyond comparison more shoAvy and 
sumptuous tlian even that of his magnificent and chivalrous 
predecessor. Acts of Parliament were no adequate barriers 
to his misgovernment. By yielding to the Avill of his Parlia- 
ment and to a temporary suspension of ])rerogative, this unfor- 
tunate prince might probably have reigned long and peacefully ; 
the contrary course of acting led eventually to his dejDosition 
and miserable death. 

Before the dissolution of parliament, Richard made a ver- 
bal protestation that nothing done therein should be in preju- 
dice of his rights — a reserA^ation not unusual Avhen any 
remarkal)le concession Avas made, but which could not decently 
be interpreted, whatever he might mean, as a dissent from the 
statute just passed. Some months had inter A'ened wheji the 
king, Avho had already released Suffolk from prison and re- 
stored him to his favor, procured from the judges, whom he 
liaclssummoned to Nottingham, a most convenient set of answers 
to questions concerning the late proceedings in Parliament. 
Tresilian and Belknap, chief justices of the King's Bench and 
Common Pleas, Avith several other judges, gave it under seals 
that the late statute and commission Avere derogatory to the 
l)rerogative ; that all avIio procured it to be passed, or persuaded 
or compelled the king to consent to it, were guilty of treason ; 
that the king's biisiness must be proceeded upon before any 
other in Parliament ; that he may jmt an end to tlie session nt 
his pleasure ; that his ministers cannot be impeached without 



English Const. APPARENT HAEMONY. 463 

his consent ; that any members of Parliament contravening 
the three last articles incur the penalties of treason, and 
especially he who moved for the sentence of deposition against 
Edward II. to be read ; and that the judgment against the 
Earl of Suffolk might be revoked as altogether, erroneous. 

These answers, perhaps extorted by menaces, as all the 
judges, except Tresilian, protested before the next Parliament, 
were for the most part servile and unconstitutional. The 
indignation which they excited, and the measures successfully 
taken to withstand the king's designs, belong to general 
history ; but I shall pass slightly over that season of turbu- 
lence, which afforded no legitimate precedent to our constitu- 
tional annals. Of the live lords appellants, as they were 
called — Gloucester, Derby, Nottingham, Warwick, and Arun- 
del — the three former, at least, have little claim to our es- 
teem ; but in every age it is the sophism of malignant and 
peevish men to traduce the cause of freedom itself, on account 
of the interested motives by which its ostensible advocates 
have frequently been actuated. The Parliament, wlio had the 
country thoroughly with them, acted no doubt honestly, but 
with an inattention to the rules of law, culpable indeed, yet 
from which the most civilized of their successors, in the heat 
of passion and triumph, have scarcely been exempt. Whether 
all .with whom they dealt severely, some of them apparently 
of good previous reputation, merited such punishment, is more 
than, upon uncertain evidence, a modern writer can profess to 
decide. 

Notwithstanding the death or exile of all Eichard's favor- 
ites, and the oath taken not only by Parliament, but by every 
class of the people, to stand by the lords appellants, we find 
him, after about a year, suddenly annihilating their preten- 
sions, and snatching the reins again witliout obstruction. The 
secret cause of this event is among the many obscurities that 
attend the history of his reign. It was conducted with a spirit 
and activity which broke out two or three times in the course 
of his imprudent life ; but we may conjecture that he had the 
advantage of disunion among his enemies. For some years 
after this the king's administration was prudent. The great 
seal, which he took away from Archbishop Arundel, he gave 
to Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, another member of the 
reforming commission, but a man of great moderation and 
political experience. Sometime after he restored the seal to 
Arundel, and reinstated the Duke of Gloucester in the council. 
The Duke of Lancaster, who had been absent during the trans- 



464 DISUNION AMONG LEADING PEERS. Cu. VIII. Pt, III. 

actions 'of the tenth and eleventh years of the king, in prosecu- 
tion of his Castiiian war, formed a link between the parties, 
and seems to have maintained some share of public favor. 

There was now a more apparent harmony between the court 
and the Parliament. It seems to have been tacitlj^ agreed that 
they shonld not interfere with the king's household expenses ; 
and they gratified him in a point where his honor had been 
most wounded, declaring his prerogative to be as high and un- 
impaired as that of his predecessors, and repealing the pre- 
tended statute by virtue of which Edward II. was said to have 
been deposed. They were provident enough, however, to grant 
conditional subsidies, to be levied only in case of a royal expedi- 
tion against the enemy ; and several were accordingly remitted 
by proclamation, this condition not being fulfilled. Richard 
never ventured to recall his favorites, though he testified his 
unabated affection for Vere by a pompous funeral. Few com- 
plaints unequivocally affecting the ministry were ])resented by 
the Commons. In one Parliament, the chancellor, treasurer, 
and counsel resigned their offices, submitting themselves to its 
judgment in case any matter of accusation should be alleged 
against them. The Commons, after a day's deliberation, ])rob- 
ably to make their approbation apj)ear more solemn, declared 
in full Parliament that nothing amiss had been found in the 
conduct of these ministers, and that they held them to have 
faithfully discharged their duties. The king reinstated them 
accordingly, with a protestation that this should not be made 
a precedent, and that it was his right to change his servants 
at pleasure. 

But this summer season was not to last forever. Richard 
had but dissembled with those concerned in the transactions 
of 1388, none of whom he could ever forgive. Thfse lords, in 
lapse of time, were divided among each other. The earls of 
Derby and Nottingham were brought into the king's interest. 
The Earl of Arundel came to an open breach with the Duke of 
Lancaster, whose pardon he was compelled to ask for an un- 
founded accusation in Parliament. Gloucester's ungoverned 
ambition, elated by popularity, coidd not brook the ascendency 
of his brother Lancaster, who was much less odious to the 
king. And the latter had given keener provocation by speak- 
ing contemptuously of that misalliance with Katherine Swine- 
ford which contaminated the blood of Plantagenet. To the 
Parliament summoned in the 20th of Richard, one object of 
Avhieh was to legitimate the Duke of Lancaster's ante-nuptial 
children by this lady, neither Gloucester nor Arundel would 



English Const. PROSECUTION OF HAXEY. 465 

repair. There passed in this assembly soiuethiug remarkable, 
as it exhibits not only the arbitrary temper of the king, a point 
by no means doubtful, but the inefficiency of the Commons to 
r(^ist it without support from political confederacies of the 
nobility. The circumstances are thus related in the record : 

During the session the king sent for the lords into Parlia- 
ment one afternoon, and told them how he had heard of cer- 
tain articles of complaint made by the Commons in conference 
with them a few days before, some of which appeared to the 
king against his royalty, estate, and liberty, and commanded 
the chancellor to niform him fully as to this. The chancellor 
accordingly related the whole matter, which consisted of four 
alleged grievances — namely, that sheriffs and escheators, not- 
withstanding a statute, are continued in their offices beyond a 
year ; ^° that the vScottish marches were not well kept ; that 
the statute against wearing great men's liveries was disre- 
garded; and, lastly, that the excessive charges of the king's 
household ought to be diminished, arising from the multitude 
of bishops and of ladies who are there maintained at his cost. 

Upon this information the king declared to the Lords that 
through God's gift he is by lineal right of inheritance King 
of England, and will have the royalty and freedom of his 
crown, from which some of these articles derogate. The first 
petition, that sheriffs should never remain in office beyond 
a year, he rejected ; but, passing lightly over the rest, took 
most offence that the Commons, who are his lieges, should 
take on themselves to make any ordinance respecting his 
royal person or household, or those whom he might please 
to have about him. He enjoined, therefore, the Lords to 
declare plainly to the Commons his pleasure in this matter ; 
and especially directed the Duke of Lancaster to make the 
speaker give up the name of the person who presented a bill 
for this last article in the lower house. 

The Commons were in no state to resist this unexpected 
promptitude of action in the king. They surrendered the 
obnoxious bill, with its proposer, one Thomas Haxey, and 
with great humility made excuse that they never designed 
to give offence to his majesty, nor to interfere with his liouse- 

1" Hume has represented tliis :is if f lie Commons had petitioned for the continu- 
ance of sheriffs beyond ii year, and grounds upon tliis mistake part of liis defence of 
Hicliard 1 1. (Note to vol! ii., p. 270, 4to edit.) For this he refers to Cotton's Abridg- 
ment; wliether rightly or not I cannot say, being little acquainted with that inaccu- 
rate book, upon wiiich it Is unfortunate tlnit Hume relied so mucli. The passage 
from Walsingham in the s;inie note is also wliolly perverted; as the reader will dis- 
cover witliout further observation. An historian must be strangely warped who 
quotes a passage explicitly complaining of illegal acts in order to iiifer that those 
very acts were legal. 



466 ARBITRARY MEASURES Chap. VIII. Pai:t III. 

hold, or attendants, knowing well that such tilings do not be- 
long to them, but to the king alone ; but merely to draw his 
attention, that he might act therein as should please him 
best. The king forgave these pitiful suppliaiits ; but Haxey 
was adjudged in Parliament to suffer death as a traitor. As, 
however, he was a clerk, ^^ the Archbishop of Canterbury, at 
the head, of the prelates, obtained of the king that his life 
might be spared, and that they might have the ci;stody of his 
})erson ; protesting that this was not claimed by way of right, 
but merely of the kmg's grace. ^^ 

This was an open defiance of Parliament, and a declaration 
of arbitrary power; for it would be impossible to contend 
that, after the repeated instances of control over public 
expenditure by the Commons since the 50th of Edward III., 
this principle was novel and unauthorized by the constitution, 
or that the right of free speech demanded by them in every 
Parliament was not a real and indisputable privilege. The 
king, however, was completely successful, and, having proved 
the feebleness of the Commons, fell next upon those he more 
dreaded. By a skilful piece of treachery he seized the Duke 
of Gloucester, and spread consternation among all his party. 
A Parliament was summoned, in which the only struggle was 
to outdo the king's wishes, and thus to efface their former 
transgressions. Gloucester, who had been murdered at Calais, 
was attainted after his death; Arundel was beheaded, his 
brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, deposed and vanished, 
Warwick and Cobham sent beyond sea. The commission of 
the tenth, the proceedings in Parliament of the eleventh, year 
of the king were annulled. The answers of the judges to the 
questions put at Nottingham, which had been punished with 
death and exile, were pronounced by Parliament to be just 
and legal. It was declared high treason to procure the repeal 
of any judgment against persons therein impeached. Their 
issue male were disabled from ever sitting in Parliament or 



" The record calls him Sir Thomas Haxey, a title at that time regularly given to 
the parson of a parish. If tliis be so, it is a remarkable authority for the clergy's 
capacity of sitting in Parliamejit. 

12 In Henry iV.'s first Parliament the Commons petitioned for Haxey's resto- 
ration, and truly say that his sentence was en aneantissement des custumes dela 
commune, p. 434. liis judgment was reversed by botli houses. There can be no 
doubt with any man wlio looks attentively at the passages relative to Haxey that he 
was a member of Parliament ; thougli tliis was questioned some years ago by the 
committee of the House of Commons, who made a report on the right of the clergy 
to be elected; a right whicli, I am inclined to believe, did exist down to the 
Reformation, as the grounds alleged for Nowell's expulsion in the first of Mary, 
besides this instance of Haxey, conspire to prove, though it has since been lost by 
disuse. 



English Const. OF RICHARD II. 467 

holding place in council. These violent ordinances, as if the 
precedent they were then overturning had not shielded itself 
with the same sanction, were sv/orn to by Parliament iipon the 
cross of Canterbury, and contirmed by a national oath, witli 
the penalty of excommunication denou:iced against its in- 
fringers. Of those recorded to have bound .themselves by 
this adjuration to Eichard, far the greater part had touched 
the same relics for Gloucester and Arundel ten years before, 
and two years afterwards swore allegiance to Henry of 
Lancaster. 

In the fervor of prosecution this Parliament could hardly 
go beyond that whose acts they were annulling ; and each 
is alike unworthy to be remembered in the way of precedent. 
But the leaders of the former, though vindictive and turbu- 
^lent, had a concern for the public interest ; and, after punish- 
ing their enemies, left the government upon its right founda- 
tion. In this all regard for liberty was extinct; and the 
Commons set the dangerous precedent of granting the king 
a subsidy upon wool during his life. Their remarkable act 
of severity was accompanied by anotlier, less unexampled, 
but, as it proved, of more ruinous tendency. The petitions 
of the Commons not having been answered during the session, 
which they were always anxious to conclude, a commission 
was granted for twelve peers and six commoners to sit after 
the dissolution, and " examine, answer, and fully determine, 
as well all the said petitions, and the matters therein com- 
prised, as all other matters and things moved in the king's 
presence, and all things incident thereto not yet determined, 
as shall seem best to them." The " other matters " mentioned 
above were, I sujipose, private petitions to the king's council 
in Parliament, which had been frequently despatched after a 
dissolution. For in the statute which establishes this com- 
mission, 21 R. II., c. 16, no poAvers are committed but those 
of examining petitions ; which, if it does not confirm the 
charge afterwards alleged against Richard, of falsifying the 
Parliament roll, must, at least, be considered as limiting and 
explaining the terms of the latter. Such a trust liad been 
committed to some lords of the council eight years before, in 
very peaceful times ; and it was even requested that the same 
might be done in future Parliaments. I>ut it is obvious what 
a latitude this gave to a prevailing faction. These eighteen 
commissioners, or some of them (for there were who disliked 
the turn of affairs), usurped the full rights of the legislature, 
which undoubtedly were only delegated in respect of busi- 



468 HEKEFOKD AND NORFOLK QUARREL. Ch. VIII. Pt. III. 

ness already comnieiicecl. They imposed a perpetual oath on 
prelates and lords for all time to come, to be taken before 
obtaining livery of their lands, that they would maintain the 
statutes and ordinances made by this Parliament, or " after- 
wards by the lords and knights having power committed to 
them by the same." They declared it high treason to disobey 
their ordinances. They annulled the patents of the dukes of 
Hereford and Norfolk, and adjudged Henry Bowet, the 
former's chaplain, who had advised him to petition for his 
inheritance, to the penalties of treason. And thus, having 
obtained a revenue for life, and the power of Parliament 
being notoriously usurped by a knot of his creatures, the 
king was little likely to meet his people again, and became 
as truly absolute as his ambition could require. 

It had been necessary for this purpose to subjugate the an-, 
cient nobility ; for the English constitution gave them such 
paramount rights that it \vas impossible either to make them 
surrender their country's freedom or to destroy it without their 
consent. But several of the chief men had fallen or were in- 
volved with the party of Gloucester. Two, who, having once 
belonged to it, had lately plunged into the depths of infamy to 
ruin their former friends, were still perfectly obnoxious to the 
king, who never forgave their original sin. These two, Henry 
of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, and Mowbray, earl of Notting- 
ham, now dukes of Hereford and Norfolk, the most powerful 
of the remaining nobility, were, by a singular conjuncture, 
thrown, as it were, at the king's feet. Of the political mys- 
teries which this reign affords, none is more inexplicable than 
the quarrel of these peers. In tlie Parliament at Shrewsbury, 
in 1398, Hereford was called upon by the king to relate Avhat 
had passed between the Duke of Norfolk and himself in slander 
of his majesty. He detailed a pretty long and not improbable 
conversation, in which Norfolk had asserted the king's intention 
of destroying them both for their old offence of impeaching his 
ministers. Norfolk had only to deny the charge and throw 
his gauntlet at the accuser. It was referred to the eighteen 
commissioners who sat after the dissolution, and a trial by com- 
bat was awarded. But when this, after many delays, was 
about to take place at Coventry, Richard interfered and settled 
the dispute by condemning Hereford to banishment for ten 
years and Norfolk for life. This strange determination, which 
treated both as guilty where only one could be so, seems to ad- 
mit of no other solution than the king's desire to rid himself 
of two peers, whom he feared and hated, at a blow. But it is 



English Const. TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT. 469 

difficult to understand by Avluit means lie drew the crafty Bol- 
ingbroke into his snare. However this might have been, he 
now threw away all appearance of moderate government. The 
indignities he had suffered in the eleventh year of his reign 
were still at his heart, a desire to revenge which seems to have 
been the mainspring of his conduct. Though a general pardon 
of those proceedings had been granted, not only at the time, 
but in his own last Parliament, he made use of them as a pre- 
tence to extort money from seventeen counties, to whom he 
imputed a share in the rebellion. He compelled men to confess 
under their seals that they had been guilty of treason, and to 
give blank obligations, which his officers filled up with large 
sums. Upon the death of the Duke of Lancaster, who had pas- 
sively complied throughout all these transactions, Richard 
refused livery of his inheritance to Hereford, whose exile im- 
plied no crime, and who had letters ])atent enabling him to 
make his attorney for that purpose during its continuance. In 
short, his government for nearly two years was altogether ty- 
rannical ; and, upon the same principles that cost James II. his 
throne, it was unquestionably far more necessary, unless our 
fathers would have abandoned all thought of liberty, to expel 
Richard 11. Far be it from us to extenuate the treachery of 
the Percies towards this unhappy prince, or the cruel circum- 
stances of his death, or in any way either to extol his successor 
or the cliief men of that time, most of whom were ambitious 
and faithless ; but after such long experience of the king's ar- 
bitrary, dissembling, and revengeful temper, I see no other safe 
course, in the actual state of the constitution, than what the 
nation concurred in pursuing. 

The reign of Richard II. is, in a constitutional light, the 
most interesting ])art of our earlier history ; and it has been 
the most imperfectly written. Some have misrepresented 
the truth through prejudice, and others through carelessness. 
It is only to be understood — and, indeed, there are great 
difficulties in the way of understanding it at all — by a peru- 
sal of the rolls of Parliament, with some assistance from the 
contemporary historians, Walsiiigliam, Knyghton, the anony- 
mous biographer published by Hearne, and Froissart. These, 
I must remark, except occasionally the last, are extremely 
hostile to Richard ; ^^ and although we are far from being 

13 It is fair to observe tliat Froissart's testimony makes most in favor of tlie king, 
or rather against liis enemies, where it is most valuable; that is, in liis account of 
what he heard in the English court in 1305, 1. iv., c. 02, where lie gives a very indiffer- 
ent character of the Duke of Gloucester. In general this writer is ill-informed of Eng- 
lish affairs, and undeserving to be quoted as au authority. 



470 CIRCUMSTANCES ATTEKDING Chap. VIII. Part III. 

bound to acquiesce in their opinions, it is at least unwarrantable 
in modern writers to sprinkle their margins Avith references to 
such authority in support of positions decidedly opposite. 

§ 15. The revolution which elevated Henry IV. to the 
throne was certainly so far accomplished by force that the 
king was in captivity, and those who might still adhere to 
him in no condition to support his authority. But the sin- 
cere concurrence which most of the prelates and nobility, 
with the mass of the people, gave to changes that could not 
have been otherwise effected by one so unprovided with foreign 
support as Henry, proves this revolution to have been, if not 
an indispensable, yet a national act, and should prevent our 
considering the Lancastrian kings as usurpers of the throne. 
Nothing, indeed, looks so mueli like usurpation in the whole 
transaction as Henry's remarkable cliallenge of the croAvn, in- 
sinuating, though not avowing, as Hume has justly animad- 
verted upon it, a false and ridiculous title by right line of 
descent, and one equally unwarrantable by conquest. The 
course of proceedings is worthy of notice. As the renuncia- 
tion of Richard might well pass for the effect of compulsion, 
there was a strong reason for propping up its instability by a 
solemn deposition from the throne, founded upon specific 
charges of misgovernment. Again, as the right of dethroning 
a monarch was nowhere found in the law, it was equally 
requisite to support this assumption of power by an actual ab- 
dication. But as neither one nor the other filled up the Duke 
of Lancaster's wishes, who was not contented with owing a 
crown to election, nor seemed altogether to account for the ex- 
clusion of the house of March, he devised this claim, which 
was preferred in the vacancy of the throne, Richard's cession 
having been read and approved in Parliament, and the sentence 
of deposition, ''out of abundant caution, and to remove all 
scruple," solemnly passed by seven commissioners appointed 
out of the several estates. " After which challenge and 
claim," says the record, " the lords spiritual and temporal, 
and all the estates there present, being asked, separately and 
together, what they thought of the said challenge and claim, 
the said estates, with the whole people, without any difficulty 
or delay, consented that the said duke sliould reign over 
them." The claim of Henry, as opposed to that of the Earl of 
March, was, indeed, ridiculous ; but it is by no means evident 
that, in such cases of extreme urgency as leave no security 
for the common weal but the deposition of a reigning prince, 
there rests any positive obligation upon the estates of the 



English Const. HENRY IV.'S ACCESSION. 471 

realm to fill his place with the nearest heir. A revolution of 
this kind seems rather to defeat and confound all prior titles ; 
though in the new settlenuMit it will commonly be prudent, as 
well as equitable, to treat them with some regard. Were this 
otherwise, it would be hard to say why William III. reigned 
to the exclusion of Anne, or even of tlie Pretender, who had 
surely committed no offence at that time ; or why (if such, 
indeed, be the true construction of the Act of Settlement) the 
more distant branches of the royal stock, descendants of Henry 
VII. and earlier kings, have been cut off from their hope of 
succession by the restriction to the heirs of the Princess 
Sophia. 

In this revolution of 1399 there was as remarkable an at- 
tention shown to the formalities of the constitution, allowance 
made for the men and the times, as in that of 1688. The 
Parliament Avas not opened by comndssion ; no one took the 
oflfi-ce of president; the Commons did not adjourn to their own 
chamber ; they chose no speaker ; the name of Parliament was 
not taken, but that only of estates of the realm. But as it 
would have been a violation of constitutional principles to 
assume a parliamentary character without the king's commis- 
sion, though summoned by his writ, so it was still more 
essential to limit their exercise of power to the necessity of 
circumstances. Upon the cession of the king, as upon his 
death, the Parliament was no more ; its existence, as the 
council of the sovereign, being dependent upon his will. The 
actual convention summoned by the writs of Richard could 
not legally become the Parliament of Henry ; and the validity 
of a statute declaring it to be siicli would probably have been 
questionable in that age, when the power of statutes to alter 
the original principles of the common law was by no means so 
thoroughly recognized as at the Restoration and Revolution. 
Yet Henry was too well pleased with his friends to part with 
them so readily ; and he had much to effect before the fervor 
of their spirits should abate. Hence an expedient was de- 
vised of issuing writs for a new Parliament, returnable in six 
days. These neither were nor could be complied with ; but 
the same meml)ers as had deposed Richard sat in the new 
Parliament, which vras regularly opened by Henry's commis- 
sioner as if they had been duly elected. In this contrivance, 
more than all the rest, we may trace the hand of lawyers. 

§ 16. If we look back from the accession of Henry IV. to 
that of his predecessor, the constitutional authority of the 
House of Commons will be perceived to have made surprising 



472 RIGHT OF TAXATION. Chap. YIII. TAiix III. 

progress during tlie course of tAventy-two years. Of the tliree 
capital points in contest while Edward reigned — that money 
could not be levied, or laws enacted, without the Commons' 
consent, and that the administration of Government was sub- 
ject to their inspection and control — the first was absolutely 
decided in their favor, the second was at least perfectly ad- 
mitted in principle, and the last was confirmed by frequent 
exercise. The Commons had acquired two additional engines 
of immense efficiency — one, the right of directing the applica- 
tion of subsidies, and calling accountants before them ; the 
other, that of impea(;hing the king's ministers for misconduct. 
All these vigorous shoots of liberty throve more and more un- 
der the three kings of the house of Lancaster, and drew such 
strength and nourishment from the generous heart of England 
that in after-times, and in a less prosperous season, though 
checked and obstructed in their growth, neither the blasts of 
arbitrary yjower could break them off, nor the mildew of servile 
o})iuion cause them to wither. I shall trace the progress of 
Parliament till the civil wars of York and Lancaster : 1, in 
maintaining the exclusive right of taxation ; 2, in directing and 
cliecking the public expenditure ; 3, in making supplies depend 
on the redress of grievances ; 4, in securing the people against 
illegal ordinances and interpolations of the statutes ; 5, in con- 
trulling the royal administration ; G, in punishing bad min- . 
isters ; and lastly, in establishing their own immunities and 
privileges. 

1 Jiif/ht of Taxation. — The pretence of levying money with- 
out consent of Parliament expired with Edward III., who had 
asserted it, as we have seen, in the very last year of his reign. 
A great council of lords and prelates, summoned in the second 
year of liis successor, declared that tliey could advise no remedy 
for the king's necessities without laying taxes on the people, 
which could only be granted in Parliament. Kor was Ilichard 
ever accused of illegal tallages, the freqiient theme of remon- 
strance under Edward. Doubless his innocence in tliis respect 
was the effect of weakness ; and if the revolution of 1399 had 
not put an end to this newly-acquired despotism, this, like every 
other right of his people, would have been swept away. A less 
palpable means of evading the consent of the Commons was by 
the extortion of loans, and harassing those who refused to pay 
by summonses before the council. These loans, the frequent 
resource of arbitrary sovereigns in later times, are first com- 
plained of in an early l*arliament of Jlicliard II. ; and a petition 
is granted that no man shall be compelled to lend the king 



English Const. KEDIIESS OF GRIEVANCES. 473 

money. But how little this was regarded we may infer from a 
writ directed, in I08G, to some persons in Boston, enjoining 
them to assess every person who had goods and chattels to the 
amount of twenty pounds, in his proportion of two hundred 
pounds, which the town had i)romised to lend the king, and 
giving an assurance that this shall be deducted from the next 
subsidy to be granted by rarliamcnt. After his triumph over 
the popular party, towards the end of his reign, he obtained 
large sums in this way. 

Under the Lancastrian kings there is much less appearance 
of raising money in an unparliamentary course. Henry IV. 
obtained an aid from a great council in the year 1400 ; but they 
did not pretend to charge any besides themselves, tliough it 
seems that some towns afterwards gave the king a contribution. 
A few years afterwards he directs the sheriffs to call on the 
richest men in their counties to advance the money voted by 
Parliament. This, if any compulsion was threatened, is an 
instance of overstrained prerogative, though consonant to the 
practice of the late reign. 

2. Ajqjropriation of SiqyiJlies. — The right of granting supplies 
would have been very incomplete, had it not been accompanied 
with that of directing their a^jplication. The principle of ap- 
propriating public moneys began, as we have seen, in the minor- 
ity of Eichard, and was among the best fruits of that period. 
It was steadily maintained under the new dynasty. The Par- 
liament of 6 Henry IV. granted two-fifteenths and two-tentlis, 
with a tax on skins and wool, on condition that it should be 
expended in the defence of the kingdom, and not otherwise, as 
Thomas lord Furnival and Sir John Pelham, ordained treas- 
urers of war for this Parliament to receive the said subsidies, 
shall account and answer to the Commons at the next I*arlia- 
ment. These treasurers were sworn in Parliament to execute 
their trusts. A similar precaution was adopted in the next 
session. 

3. Bedress of Grievances. — The Commons made a bold at- 
tempt in the second year of Henry IV. to give the strongest 
security to their claims of redress, by inverting the usual 
course of parliamentary proceedings. It was usual to answer 
their petitions on the last day of the session, which put an end 
to all further discussion upon them, and prevented their mak- 
ing the redress of grievances a necessary condition of supply. 
They now requested that an answer might be given before 
they made their grant of subsidy. This Avas one of the 
articles which Richard II. "s judges had declared it high 



474 DISPENSING POWER Chai\ VIII. Part III. 

treason to attempt. Henry was not inclined to make a con- 
cession wliich would virtually have removed the chief im- 
pediment to the ascendency of Parliament. He first said 
that he Avould consult with the Lords, and answer according 
to their advice. On the last day of the session the Commons 
were informed that " it had never been known in the time of 
his ancestors that they should have their petitions answered 
before they had done all their business in Parliament, whether 
of granting money or any other concern ; wherefore the king 
will not alter the good customs and usages of ancient times." 

Notwithstanding the just views these Parliaments appear 
generally to have entertained of their power over the public 
purse, that of the third of Henry V. followed a precedent 
from the worst times of Richard II.. by granting the king a 
subsidy on avooI and leather during his life. This, an histo- 
rian tells us, Henry IV. had vainly labored to obtain; but the 
taking of Harfleur intoxicated the English with new dreams 
of conquest in France, which their good sense and constitu- 
tional jealousy were not firm enough to resist. The continued 
expenses of the war, however, prevented this grant from be- 
coming so dangerous as it might have been in a season of 
tranquillity. Henry V., like his father, convoked Parliament 
almost in every year of his reign. 

4. Legislative Rights. — It had long been out of all question 
that the legislature consisted of the king, Lords, and Com- 
mons ; or in stricter language, that the king could not make 
or repeal statutes witliout the consent of Parliament. P)ut 
this fundamental maxim was still frequently defeated by 
various acts of evasion or violence : which though protested 
against as illegal, it was a difficult task to prevent. The 
king sometimes exerted a power of suspending the observance 
of statutes, as in the ninth of Richard II., Avhen a petition 
that all statutes might be confirmed is granted, with an 
exception as to one passed in the last Parliament, forbidding 
the judges to take fees or give counsel in cases where the 
king was a party ; which, " because it was too severe and 
needs declaration, the king would have of no effect till it 
should be declared in Parliament." 

The dispensing power-, as exercised in favor of individuals, 
is quite of a different character from this general suspension 
of statutes, but indirectly weakens the sovereignty of the 
legislature. This power was exerted, and even recognized, 
throughout all the reigns of the Plantagenets. In the first 
cf Henry V. the Commons pray that the statute for driving 



English Const OF TUE CROWN. ' 475 

aliens out of the kingdom be executed. The king assents, 
saving his prerogative and his right of dispensing with it 
when he pleased. To which the Commons replied that their 
intention was never otherwise, nor, by God's help, ever should 
be. At the same time one llees ap Thomas petitions the king 
to modify, or dispense with, the statute prohibiting AV^elshmen 
from purchasing lands in England, or the* English towns in 
Wales ; which the king grants. In the same Parliament the 
Commons pray that no grant or protection be made to any 
one in contravention to the statute of provisors, saving the 
king's prerogative. He merely answers, "Let the statutes 
be observed ; " evading any allusion to his dispensing power. 

The practice of leaving statutes to be drawn up by the 
judges, from the petition and answer jointly, after a disso- 
lution of Parliament, presented an opportunity of falsifying 
the intention of the legislature, whereof advantage was often 
taken. Some very remarkable instances of this fraud 
occurred in the reigns of Kichard II. and Henry IV. 

An ordinance was put upon the roll of Parliament, in tlie 
fifth of Richard II., empowering sheriffs of counties to arrest 
])reachers of heresy and their abettors, and detain them in 
prison till they should justify themselves before the Church. 
This was introduced into the statutes of the year ; but the 
assent of Lords and Commons is not expressed. In the next 
Parliainent the Commons, reciting this ordinance, declare 
that it was never assented to nor granted by them, but what 
had been proposed in this matter was without their con- 
currence (that is, as I conceive, had been rejected by them), 
and pray that this statute be annulled ; for it was never their 
intent to bind themselves or their descendants to the bishops 
more than their ancestors had been bound in times past. The 
king returned an answer agreeing to this ])etition. Nevertheless 
the ])retended statute was untouched, and remains still among 
our laws,^* unrepealed, except by desuetude, and by inference 
from the acts of much later times. 

This commendable reluctance of the Commons to let the 
clergy forge chains for them produced, as there is much ap- 
pearance, a similar violation of their legislative rights in the 
next reign. The statute against heresy in the second of 

" R. TI., Stat. 2, c. 5; Rot. Pari. 6 R. II., p. HI. Some other instances of the 
Commons attempting to prevent these unfair practices are adduced by Rutt'liead, in 
his preface to the Statutes, and in Prynne's preface to Cotton's Abridsment of t)ie 
Records. The net 1.3 R. II., stat. 1, c. 15, tliat the Icing's castles and jails which had 
been separated from the bodv of the adjoining counties should be reunited to them, 
is not founded upon any petition that appears on the roll; and probably, by making 
search, other instances equally flagrant might be discovered. 



476 " CONTKOLLING TUE Cuap. Vlll. Pakt 111. 

Henry IV. is not grounded upon any petition of the Com- 
mons, but only upon one of the clergy. It is said to be en- 
acted by consent of the Lords ; but no notice is taken of the 
lower house in the Parliament roll, though the statute reciting 
the petition asserts the Commons to have joined in it. The 
petition and the statute are both in Latin, which is unusual 
in the laws of this time. In a subsequent petition of the 
Commons this act is styled " the statute made in the second 
year of your majesty's reign at the request of the prelates and 
clergy of your kingdom ; " which affords a presumption that it 
had no regular assent of I'arliament. And the spirit of the 
Commons daring this whole reign being remarkable hostile to 
the Church, it would have been hardly possible to obtain their 
consent to so penal a law against heresy. Several of their 
petitions seem designed indirectly to weaken its efficacy. 

These infringements of their most essential right were re- 
sisted by the Commons in various ways, according to the 
measure of their power. But even where there was no design 
to falsify the roll it Avas impossible to draw u}) statutes which 
should be in truth the acts of the whole legislature, so long as 
the king continued to grant petitions in part, and to ingraft 
new matter upon them. Such was still the case till the Com- 
mons hit upon an effectual expedient for screening themselves 
against these encroachments, Avhich has lasted without altera- 
tion to the present day. This was the introduction of com- 
plete statutes under the name of bills, instead of the old 
]ietitions ; and these containing the royal assent and the 
whole form of a law, it became, though not quite immediately, 
a constant principle that the king must admit or reject them 
without qualification. This alteration, which wrought an ex- 
traordinary effect on the character of our constitution, was 
gradually intrf)duced in Henry VI. 's reign. 

From the first 3^ears of Henry V., though not. I think, 
earlier, the Commons began to concern themselves with the 
])etitions of individuals to the Lords or Council. The nature 
of the jurisdiction exercised by the latter will be treated more 
fully hereafter ; it is only necessary to mention in this place 
that many of the requests preferred to them were such as 
could not be granted withoiit transcending the boundaries of 
law. A just inquietude as to the encroachments of the king's 
council had long been manifested by the Commons ; and find- 
ing remonstrances ineffectual, they took measures for prevent- 
ing such usurpations of legislative power l)y introducing their 
own consent to private petitions. These were now presented 



English Const. ROYAL EXPENDITURE. 477 

by the hands of the Commons, and in very many instances 
passed in the form of statutes with the express assent of all 
parts of the legislature. Such was the origin of private bills, 
which occupy the greater part of the rolls in Henry V. and 
VI. 's Parliament. 

5. Controlling the Royal Exjoenditure. — If the strength of 
the Commons had lain merely in the weakness of the crown, 
it might be inferred that such harassing interference with the 
administration of affairs as the youthful and frivolous Richard 
was compelled to endure would have been sternly repelled by 
his experienced successor. But, on the contrary, the spirit of 
Richard might have rejoiced to see that his mortal enemy 
suffered as hard usage at the hands of Parliament as himself. 
After a few years the governme'iit of Henry became extremely 
unpopular. Perhaps his dissension with the great family of 
Percy, which had placed him on the throne, and was regarded 
with partiality by the people, chiefly contributed to this aliena- 
tion of their attachment. The Commons requested, in the fifth 
of his reign, that certain persons might be removed from the 
court ; the Lords concurred in displacing four of these, one 
being the king's confessor. Henry came down to Parliament 
and excused these four persons, as knowing no special cause 
why they should be removed ; yet, well understanding that 
what the Lords and Commons should ordain would be for his 
and his kingdom's interest, and therefore anxious to conform 
himself to their wishes, consented to the said ordinance, and 
charged the persons in question to leave his palace ; adding, 
that he would do as much by any other about his person 
whom he should And to have incurred the ill affection of his 
people. 

But no Parliament came near, in the number and boldness 
of its demands, to that held in the eighth year of Henry IV. 
The Commons presented tliirty-one articles, none of which the 
king ventured to refuse, though pressing very severely upon 
his prerogative. He was to name sixteen counsellors, by 
whose advice he was solely to be guided, none of them to be 
dismissed without conviction of misdemeanor. The chancellor 
and privy seal to pass no grants or other matter contrary to 
law. Any persons about the court stirring up the king or 
queen's minds against their subjects, and duly convicted there- 
of, to lose their offices and be fined. The king's ordinary rev- 
enue was wholly a]ipro])riited to his houseliold and the pay- 
ment of his debts ; no grant of wardship or other profit to be 
made thereout, nor any forfeiture to be pardoned. The king, 



478 ROYAL EXPENDlTUilE. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

" considering the wise government of other Christian princes, 
and confonuing himself thereto," was to assign two days in 
the week for petitions, " it being an honorable and necessary 
thing that his lieges, Avho desired to petition him, should be 
heard." No judicial officer, nor any in the revenue or house- 
hold, to enjoy his place for life or term of years. No petition 
to be presented to the king by any of his household at times 
when the council were not sitting. The council to determine 
nothing cognizable at common law, unless for a reasonable 
cause and with consent of the judges. The statutes regulating 
purveyance were affirmed — abuses of various kinds in the 
council and in courts of justice enumerated and forbidden — 
elections of knights for counties put under regulation. The 
council and officers of state were sworn to observe the common 
law and all statutes, those especially just enacted. 

It must strike every reader that these provisions were of 
themselves a noble fabric of constitutional liberty, and hardly 
perhaps inferior to the petition of right under Charles I. We 
cannot account for the submission of Henry to conditions far 
more derogatory than ever were imposed on Kichard, because 
the secret politics of his reign are very imperfectly under- 
stood. 

Power deemed to be ill gotten is naturally precarious ; and 
the instance of Henry IV. has been well quoted to prove that 
public liberty flourishes with a bad title in the sovereign. 
None of our kings seem to have been less beloved ; and indeed 
he had little claim to affection. But what men denied to the 
reigning king they poured in full measure upon the heir of his 
throne. The virtues of the I'rince of Wales are almost invidi- 
ously eulogized by those Parliaments who treat harshly his 
father ; and these records afford a strong presumption that 
some early petulance or riot lias been much exaggerated by 
the vulgar minds of our chroniclers. One can scarcely under- 
stand, at least, that a prince who was three years engaged in 
quelling the dangerous insurrection of Glendower, and who 
in the latter time of his father's reign presided at the council, 
was so lost in a cloud of low debauchery as common fame 
represents. Loved he certainly was throughout his life, as so 
intrepid, affable, and generoiis a temper well deserved ; and 
this sentiment was heightened to admiration by successes still 
more rapid and dazzling than those of Edward III. During 
his reign there scarcely appears any vestige of dissatisfaction 
in Parliament — a circumstance very honorable, whether we 
ascribe it to the justice of his administration or to the affection 
of his people. 



English Const. IMPEACHMENT OP MINISTERS. 479 

The Pai'liament confirmed the league of Henry V. with the 
Emperor Sigi.smund ; and the treaty of Troyes, which was so 
fundamentally to change the situation of Henry and his suc- 
cessors, obtained, as it evidently required, the sanction of both 
houses of Parliament. These precedents conspiring with the 
weakness of the executive government, in the minority of 
Henry VI., to fling an increase of influence into the scale of 
the Commons, they made their concurrence necessary to all 
important business both of a foreign and domestic nature. 
Thus commissioners were appointed to treat of the deliverance 
of the King of Scots, the duchesses of Bedford and Gloucester 
were made denizens, and mediators were appointed to reconcile 
the dukes of Gloucester and Burgundy, by authority of the 
three estates assembled in l\arliament. Leave was given to 
the dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, and others in the king's 
behalf, to treat of peace with France, by both houses of Parlia- 
ment, in pursuance of an article in the treaty of Troyes, that 
no treaty should be set on foot with the dauphin Avithout con- 
sent of the three estates of both realms. This article was 
afterward repealed. 

Some complaints are made by the Commons, even during 
the first years of Henry's minority, that the king's subjects 
underwent arbitrary imprisonment, and were vexed by sum- 
monses before the council and by the newly-invented writ of 
subpoena out of chancery. But these are not so common as 
formerly ; and so far as the rolls lead us to any inference, 
there was less injustice committed by the government under 
Henry VI. and his father than at any former period. Waste- 
fulness, indeed, might justly be im])uted to the regency, who 
had scandalously lavished the king's revenue. This ultimately 
led to an act for resuming all grants since his accession, 
founded upon a public declaration of the great officers of the 
crown that his debts amounted to £372,000, and the annual 
expenses of the household amounted to £24,000, while the 
ordinary revenue was not more than £5000. 

6. Im,2yeachmpnt of Ministers. — But before this time the sky 
had begun to darken, and discontent with the actual adminis- 
tration pervaded every rank. The causes of this are familiar 
— the unpopularity of the king's marriage with Margaret of 
Anjou, and her impolitic violence in the conduct of affairs, 
particularly the imputed murder of the people's favorite, the 
Duke of Gloucester. This provoked an attack u]ion her own 
creature, the Duke of Suffolk. Impeachment had lain still, 
like a sword in the scabbard, since the accession of Henry IV. 



480 PRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT. Chap. VIII. Part IIL 

In Suffolk's case the Commons seem to have proceeded by 
bill of attainder, or at least to have designed the judgment 
against that minister to be the act of the whole legislature ; 
for they delivered a bill containing articles against liim to the 
Lords, with a request that they would pray the king's majesty 
to enact that bill in Parliament, and that the said duke might 
be proceeded against upon the said articles in Parliament 
according to the law and custom of England. These articles 
contained charges of high treason, chiefly relating to his con- 
duct in France, which, whether treasonable or not, seems to 
have been grossly against the honor and advantage of the 
crown. At a later day the Commons presented many other 
articles of misdemeanor. To the former he made a defence, in 
presence of the king as well as the Lords, both spiritual and 
temporal ; and indeed the articles of impeachment were directly 
addressed to the king, which gave him a reasonable pretext to 
interfere in the judgment. But from apprehension, as it is 
said, that Suffolk could not escape conviction upon at least 
some part of these charges, Henry anticipated with no slight 
irregularity the course of legal trial, and, summoning the peers 
into a private chamber, informed the Duke of Suffolk, by 
mouth of his chancellor, that, inasmuch as he had not put him- 
self upon his peerage, but submitted wholly to the royal pleas- 
ure, the king, acquitting him of the first articles containing 
matter of treason, by his own advice and not that of the Lords, 
nor by way of judgment, not being in a place where judgment 
could be delivered, banished him for five years from his domin- 
ions. The lords then present besought the king to let their 
protest appear on record, that neither they nor their posterity 
might lose their rights of peerage by this precedent. It was 
justly considered as an arbitrary stretch of prerogative, in 
order to defeat the privileges of I'arliament and screen a favor- 
ite minister from punishment. But the course of proceeding 
by bill of attainder instead of regular impeachment was not 
judiciously chosen by the Commons. 

Privilege of Parliament. — Privilege of Parliament, an ex- 
tensive and singular branch of our constitutional law, begins 
to attract attention under the Lancastrian princes. It is true, 
indeed, that we can trace long before by records, and may 
infer with probability as to times whose records have not sur- 
vived, one considerable immunity — a freedom from arrest for 
persons transacting the king's business in Ids national council. 
But in those rude times members of Parliament Avere not al- 
ways respected by the officers executing legal process, and still 



English Coi^st. TRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT. 481 

less by the violators of law. After several remonstrances, 
which the crown had evaded, the Commons obtained the 
statute 11 Henry VI., c. 11, for the punishment of such as 
assault any on their way to the Parliament, giving double 
damages to the party. They had more difficulty in establish- 
ing, notwithstanding the old precedents in their favor, an im- 
munity from all criminal process except in charges of treason, 
felony, and breach of the peace, which is their present measure 
of privilege. The most celebrated, however, of these early 
cases of privilege is that of Thomas Thorp, speaker of the 
Commons in 31 Henry VI. This person, who was, moreover, 
a baron of the Exchequer, had been imprisoned on an execu- 
tion at suit of the Duke of York. The Commons sent some of 
their members to coni])lain of a violation of privilege to the 
king and Lords in Parliament, and to demand Thorp's release. 
It was alleged by the Duke of York's counsel that the trespass 
done by Thorp was since the beginning of the Parliament, and 
the judgment thereon given in time of vacation, and not during 
the sitting. The Lords referred the question to the judges, 
who said, after deliberation, that " they ought not to answer 
to that question, for it hath not be used aforetyme tliat the 
judges should in any wise determine the privilege of this high 
court of Parliament ; for it is so high and so mighty in his 
nature that it may make law, and that that is law it may make 
no law ; and the determination and knowledge of that privilege 
belongeth to the Lords of the Parliament, and not to the jus- 
tices." They went on, however, after observing that a general 
writ of supersedeas of all processes upon ground of privilege 
had not been known to say that, "if any person that is a 
member of tliis high court of Parliament be arrested in such 
cases as be not for treason, or felony, or surety of the peace, 
or for a condemnation had before the Parliament, it is used 
that all such persons should be released of such arrests and 
make an attorney, so that they may have their freedom and 
liberty freely to intend upon the Parliament." 

Notwithstanding this answer of the judges, it was con- 
cluded by the Lords that Thorp shoidd remain in prison, with- 
out regarding the alleged privilege ; and the Commons were 
directed in the king's name to proceed " with all goodly haste 
and speed " to the election of a new speaker. It is curious to 
observe that the Commons, forgetting their grievances, or con- 
tent to drop them, made such haste and speed according to 
this command that they presented a new speaker for approba- 
tion the next day. 



482 PRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT. Chap. VIII. Pa ax IIL 

This case, as lias been strongly said, was begotten by the 
iniquity of the times. The state was verging fast towards 
civil war; and Thorp, who afterwards distinguished himself 
for the Lancastrian cause, was an inveterate enemy of the 
Duke of York. That jDrince seems to have been swayed a 
little from his usual temper in procuring so unwarrantable 
a determination. In the reign of Edward IV. the Commons 
claimed privilege against any civil suit during the time of 
their session ; but they had recourse, as before, to a particular 
act of Parliament to obtain a writ of supersedeas in favor of 
one Atwell, a member, who had been sued. The present law 
of privilege seems not to have been fully established, or at 
least effectually maintained, before the reign of Henry 
VIII. 

No privilege of the Commons can be so fiuidamental as 
liberty of speech. This is claimed at the opening of every 
Parliament by their speaker, and could never be infringed with- 
out shaking the ramparts of the constitution. Richard II. 's 
attack upon Haxey has been already mentioned as a flagrant 
evidence of his despotic intentions. No other case occurs 
until the 33d year of Henry VI., when Thomas Young, mem- 
ber for Bristol, complained to the Commons that, " for mat- 
ters by him showed in the house accustomed for the Commons 
in the said Parliaments, he was therefore taken, arrested, and 
rigorously in open wise led to the Tower of London, and tliere 
grievously in great duress long time imprisoned against the 
said freedom and liberty ; " Avith much more to the like effect. 
The Commons transmitted this petition to the Lords, and the 
king " willed that the lords of his council do and provide for 
the srid suppliant as in their discretions shall be thought con- 
venient and reasonable." This im])risonment of Young, how- 
ever, had happened six years before, in consequence of a 
motion made by him that, the king then having no issue, 
the Duke of York might be declared heir-a])parent to the 
crown. In the present session, when the Duke was pro- 
tector, he thought it well-timed to prefer his claim to re- 
muneration. 

There is a remarkable precedent in the 9th of Henry IV., 
and perhaps the earliest autliority for two eminent maxims of 
Parliamentary law — that the Commons possess an exclusive 
right of originating money bills, and that the king ought not 
to take notice of matters pending in Parliament. A quarrel 
broke out between the two houses upon this ground ; and as 
we have not before seen the Commons venture to clash openly 



Engt.iph Const. PRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT. 483 

with their superiors, the circumstance is for this additional 
reason worthy of attention. As it has been little noticed, I 
shall translate the whole record. ^^ 

Every attentive reader will discover this remarkable pas- 
sage to illustrate several points of constitutional law. For 
hence it may be perceived — tirst, that the king was used in 
those times, to be present at debates of the Lords, personally 

15 " Friday, the second day of December, wliich was flic last day of the Parliament, 
.the Commons came before the king and the Lords in I'arliament, and there, by com- 
mand of tlieking, a schedule of Indemnity touching a certain altercation moved be- 
tween the Lords and Commons was read; and on this it was commanded by our said 
lord tlie king that the said schedule should be entered of record in the roll of Parlia- 
ment; of which schedule the tenor is as follows : Be it remembered, that on Monday, 
the ~lst day of November, the king our sovereign lord being in the council-chamber, 
in the abbey of Gloucester, the lords spiritual and temporal for this present Parlia- 
ment assembled being then in his presence, a debate took place among them about 
the state of the kingdom, and its defence to resist the malice of the enemies who on 
every side prepare to molest the said kingdom and its faithful subjects, and how no 
man can resist this malice unless, for the safeguard and defence of his said kingdom, 
our sovereign lord the king has some notable aid and subsidy granted to him in his 
present Parliament. And tlierefore it was demanded of the said Lords by way of 
question what aid would be sudicient and requisite in these circumstances ? To 
which question it was answered by the said Lords severally, that, considering the 
necessity of the king on one side and the poverty of his people on the other, no less 
aid couid be sufficient than one-tenth and a half from cities and towns, and one-lif- 
teeuth and a half from all other lay persons; and, besides, to grant a continuance of 
the subsidy on wool, wool-fells, and leather, and of three shillings on the tun (of 
wine), and twelve pence on the pound (of other merchandise), from Michaelmas 
next ensuing for two years thenceforth. Whereupon by command of our said lord 
the king, a message was sent to tlie Commons of this Parliament to cause a certain 
number of their body to come before our said lord the king and the Lords, in order to 
hear and report to their comi)anions what they should be commanded by our said lord 
the king. And upon this the said Commons sent into the presence of our said 
lord the king and the said Lords twelve of tlieir companions; to whom, by command 
of our said lord the king, the said question was declared, with the answer by the said 
Lords severally given to it. Which answer it was tlie pleasure of our said lord the 
king that they should report to the rest of their fellows, to the end that they might 
take the sliortest course to comply with the intention of the said Lords. Wliich re- 
port being thus made to the said Commons, they were greatlv disturbed at it, saying 
and asserting it to be much to the jn-ejudice and derogation of their liberties. Anil 
after that our said lord the king had heard this, not willing that any thing should be 
done at present, or in time to come, that might anywise turn against the libertv of 
the estate for which they are come to Parliament, nor against the liberties of "the 
said Lords, wills and grants and declares, by the advice .andconsent of the said Lords, 
as follows : to wit, that it shall be lawful for the Lords to debate together in this pres- 
ent Parliament, and in every other for time to come, in the king's absence, concern- 
ing the condition of the kingdom, and the remedies necessary for it. And in like 
manner it shall be lawful for the Commons, on their part, to debate together concern- 
ing the said condition and remedies. Provided always that neither the Lords on their 
part, nor the Commons on theirs, do make any report to our said lord the king of any 
grant granted by the Commons, and agreed to by the Lords, nor of the communica- 
tions of the said grant, before tluat the said Lords and Commons are of one accord 
and agreement in this matter, and then in manner and form .accustomed— that is to 
say, by the mouth of the speaker of the said Commons for the time being— to the end 
that the said Lords and Commons may have what they desire (avoir puissent lour gree) 
of our said lord tlie king. Our said lord the king willing, moreover, bv the consent 
of the said Lords, that the communication had in this present Parliament as above be 
not drawn into precedent in time to come, nor be turned to the prejudice or deroga- 
tion of the liberty of the estate for wliich the said Commons are now come, neither in 
this present Parliament nor in any other time to come. But wills that himself and 
all the other estates should be as free as they were before. Also, the s.aid last day of 
Parliament, the said speaker prayed our said lord the king, on the part of the said 
Commons, that he would grant the said Commons that they should depart in .i.s great 
liberty as other ("ommons had done before. To which the king answered that this 
pleased him well, and that at all times it had been his desire." 



484 PRIVILEGE OF PARLIAMENT. Chap. VIII. Part IIL 

advising with them upon the public business ; which also 
appears by many other passages on record ; and this practice, 
1 conceive, is not abolished by the king's present declaration, 
save as to grants of money, which ought to be of the free-will 
of Parliament, and without that fear or mlluence Avhich the 
presence of so high a person might create : secondly, that it 
was already the established law of Parliament that .tlie Lords 
sliTDuld consent to the Commons' grant, and not the Commons 
to the Lords' ; since it is the inversion of tliis order whereof 
the Commons complain, and it is said expressly that grants are 
made by the Commons, and agreed to by the Lords : thirdly, 
that the lower house of Parliament is not, in proper language, 
an estate of the realm, but rather the image and representative 
of the Commons of England ; who, being the third estate, with 
the nobility and clergy make up and constitute the people of 
this kingdom and liege subjects of the crown.^^ 

It was not only m money bills that the originating power 
was supposed to reside m the Commons. The course of pro- 
ceedings in Parliament, as has been seen, from the commence- 
ment at least of Edward III.'s reign, was that the Commons 
presented petitions, which the Lords by themselves, or with 
the assistance of the council, having duly considered, the 
sanction of the king was notified or withheld. This was so 
much according to usage, that on one occasion, wlien the 
Commons requested the advice of the other house on a matter 
before them, it was answered that the ancient custom and 
form of Parliament had ever been for the Commons to report 
their own opinion to the king and Lords, and not to the 
contrary; and the king wovdd have the ancient and laudable 
usages of Parliament maintained. It is singular tliat, in tlie 
terror of innovation, the Lords did not discover how materially 
this usage of I'arliament took off from their own legislative 
influence. The rule, however, was not observed in succeeding 
times ; bills originated indiscriminately in either house ; and 
indeed some acts of Henry V., which do not appear to be 
grounded on any petition, may be suspected, from the manner 
of their insertion in the rolls of Parliament, to have been pro- 
posed on the king's part to tlie Commons. 

1" A notion is entertained by many people, and not without the autliority of sonic 
very respectalsle names, that tlie khii; is one of the three estates of the realm, the 
lords spiritual and temporal forming tofrether the second, as the Commons in Parlia- 
ment do the third. This is contradicted by the general tenor of our ancient records 
and law-books; and indeed the analogy of other governments ought to have the 
greatest weight, even if more reason for doubt appeared upon tlie face of our own 
authorities. Mut the instances where the three estates are declared or implied to 
he the nobility, clergy, and commons, or at least their representatives in Parliament, 
are too numerous for insertion. 



English Const. RIGHT OF VOTING FOR KNIGHTS. 485 

§ IT. Whoever may have been the original voters for county 
representatives, the hrst statute tliat regulates their election, 
so far from limiting the privilege to tenants in capite, appears 
to place it upon a very large and democratical foundation. 
For (as I ratlier conceive, though not without much hesitation) 
not only all freeholders, but all persons whatever present at 
the County Court were declared, or rendered, capable of vot- 
ing for the knight of their shire. Such at least seems to be 
the inference from the expressions of 7 Henry IV., c. 15, " all 
who are there present, as well suitors duly summoned for that 
cause as others." And this acquires some degree of confirma- 
tion from the later statute, 8 Henry VI., c. 7, which, reciting 
that "elections of knights of shires have now of late been 
made by very great, outrageous, and excessive number of 
people dwelling within the same counties, of the wliich most 
part was people of small substance and of no value," confines 
the elective franchise to freeholders of lands or tenements to 
the value of forty shillings. 

The representation of towns in Parliament was founded 
upon two principles — of consent to public burdens, and of 
advice in public measures, especially such as related to trade 
and shipping. Ui3on both these accounts it was natural for 
the kings who first summoned them to Parliament, little fore- 
seeing that such half-emancipated burghers would ever clip 
the loftiest plumes of their prerogative, to make these assem- 
blies numerous, and summon members from every town of 
consideration in the kingdom. Thus the writ of 23 Edward I. 
directs the sheriffs to cause deputies to be elected to a general 
council from every city, borough, and trading-town. And 
although the last words are omitted in subsequent writs, yet 
their spirit was preserved ; many towns having constantly 
returned members to Parliament by regular summonses from 
the sheritt's, which were no chartered boroughs, nor had aj)- 
parently any other claim tlian their populousness or commerce. 
These are now called boroughs by prescription." 

Besides these respectable towns, there were some of a less 
eminent figure which had writs directed to them as ancient 
demesnes of the crown. During times of arbitrary taxation 
the crown had set tallages alike upon its chartered boroughs 
and upon its tenants in demesne. When Parliamentary con- 
sent became indispensable, the free tenants in ancient demesnes, 
or rather sucli of them as inhabited some particular vills, were 

" The majority of prescriptive boroughs liavp prescriptive corporations which carry 
the legal, wliich is not always the moral, presumption of an original charter. 



486 POWER OF SHERIFF. Chap. VIII. Paut III. 

called to Parliament among the other representatives of the 
Commons. They are usually specified distinctly from the 
other classes of representatives in grants of subsidies throiigh- 
out the Parliaments of the first and second Edwards, till, about 
the beginning of the third's reign, they, they were confounded 
with ordinary burgesses. This is the foundation of that par- 
ticular sp'^cies of elective franchise incident to Avhat we de- 
nominate burgage tenure ; which, however, is not confined to 
the ancient demesne of the crown. 

The proper constituents, therefore, of the citizens and bur- 
gesses in Parliament appear to have been — 1. All chartered 
boroughs, whether they derived their i^rivileges from the crown 
or from a mesne lord, as several in Cornwall did from Richard, 
king of the Romans ; 2. All towns which were the ancient or 
the actual demesne of tlie crown ; 3. All considerable places, 
though iniincorporated, which could afford to defray the ex- 
penses of their representatives, and had a notable interest in 
the public welfare. F)ut no Parliament ever perfectly corre- 
sponded with this theory. The writ was addressed in general 
terms to the sheriff, requiring him to cause two knights to be 
elected out of the body of the county, two citizens from every 
city, and two burgesses from every borough. It rested alto- 
gether upon him to determine Avhat tOAvns should exercise this 
franchise ; and it is really incredible, with all the carelessness 
and ignorance of those times, what frauds the sheriffs ventured 
to commit in executing this trust. Though Parliaments met 
almost every year, and tliere could be no mistake in so notori- 
ous a fact, it was the continual practice of sheriffs to omit 
boroughs that had been in recent habit of electing members, 
and to return upon the writ that there were no more w'ithin 
their county. Tlius in the 12th of Edward III. the Sheriff of 
Wiltshire, after returning two citizens for Salisbury, and bur^ 
gesses for two boroughs, concludes with these words : " There 
are no other cities or boroughs witliin my bailiwick." Yet, in 
fact, eight other towns had sent members to preceding Par- 
liaments. So in the 6th of Edward II. the Sheriff of Bucks 
declared that he had no borough within his county except 
Wicomb ; though Wendover, Agmondesham, and Marlow had 
twice made returns since that king's accession. And from this 
cause alone it has happened that many towns called boroughs, 
and having a charter and constitution as such, never returned 
members to Parliament ; some of which are now among the 
most considerable in England — as Leeds, Birmingham, and 
Macclesfield. 



English Const. RELUCTANCE TO SEND MEMBERS. 487 

It lias been suggested, indeed, that these returns may not 
appear so false and collusive if we suppose tlie sheriff to mean 
only that there were no resident burgesses within these bor- 
oughs tit to be returned, or that the expense of their wages 
would be too heavy for the place to support. And no doubt 
the latter plea, whether implied or not in the return, was very 
frequently an inducement to the sheriff to spare the smaller 
boroughs. The wages of knights were four shillings a day, 
levied on all freeholders, or at least on all holding by knight- 
service, within the county. Those of burgesses were half that 
sum ; ^* but even this pittance was raised with reluctance and 
difficulty from miserable burghers little solicitous about politi- 
cal franchises. Poverty, indeed, seems to have been accepted 
as a legal excuse. 

The elective franchise was deemed by the boroughs no privi- 
lege or blessing, but rather, during the chief part of this period, 
an intolerable grievance. Where they could not persuade the 
sheriff to omit sending his writ to them they set it at defiance 
by sending no return. And tJiis seldom failed to succeed, so 
that, after one or two refusals to comply, which brought no 
punishment upon them, they were left in quiet enjoyment of 
their insignificance. 

The partiality of sheriffs in leaving out boroughs, which were 
accustomed in old time to come to the Parliament, was re- 
pressed, as far as law could repress it, by a statute of Richard 
II., which imposed a fine on them for such neglect, and upon 
any member of Parliament who should absent himself from 
his duty. But it is, I think, highly probable that a great part 
of those wlio were elected from the boroughs did not trouble 
themselves with attendance in Parliament. The sheriff even 
found it necessary to take sureties for their execution of so 
burdensome a duty, whose names it was usual, down to the end 
of the fifteenth century, to indorse upon the writ along with 
those of the elected. This expedient is not likely to have been 



18 The wages of knights and burgesses were first reduced to this certain sum by 
the writs De levandis expensis, 16 Edward II. These were issued at the request of 
those wlio had served, after the dissolution of Parliament, and included a certain 
number of days, according to tlie distance of the county wlience they came, for going 
and returning. It appears by these that thirty-five or forty miles were reckoned a 
day's journey; whicli may correct the exaggerated notions of bad roads and tardy 
locomotion tliat are sometimes entertained. 

The latest entries of writs for expenses in the close rolls are of 2 Henry V.; but 
they may be proved to have issued much longer ; and Prynne traces them to the end 
of Henry VIII's reign, p. 547. Witliout tlie formality of this writ a very few instances 
of towns remunerating their burgesses for attendance in Parliament are known to 
have occurred in later times. Andrew Marvel is commonly said to have been the 
last who received this honorable salary. 



488 MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS. Chap. VIII. Paut III. 

very successful, and the statute of Richard II, produced no 
sensible effect. 

By Avhat persons the election of burgesses Avas usually made 
is a question of great obscurity. It appears to have been the 
feiomnion practice for a very fcAv of the principal members of 
the corporation to make the election in the County Court, and 
their names, as actual electors, are generally returned upon the 
writ by the sheriff. But we cannot surely be warranted by 
this to infer that they acted in any other caj^acity than as depu- 
ties of the whole body, and indeed it is frequently expressed 
that they chose such and such persons by the assent of the 
community ; by which word, in an ancient corporate borough, 
it seems natural to understand the freemen participating in its 
general franchises, rather than the ruling body, Avhich, in many 
instances at present, and always perhaps in the earliest age of 
corporations, derived its authority by delegation from the rest. 
The consent, however, of the inferior freemen we may easily 
believe to have been merely nominal ; and, from being nominal, 
it would in many places come by degrees not to be required at 
all — the corporation, specially so denominated, or municipal 
government, acquiring by length of usage an exclusive privilege 
m election of members of I'arliament, as they did in local ad- 
ministration. This, at least, appears to me a more probable 
hypothesis than that of Dr. Brady, who limits the original right 
of election in all corporate boroughs to the aldermen or other 
capital burgesses.^® 

The members of the House of Commons, from this occa- 
sional disuse of ancient boroughs as well as from the creation 
of new ones, underwent some fluctuation during the period 
subject to our review. Two hundred citizens and burgesses 
sat in the I'arliament held by Edward I. in his twenty-third 
year, the earliest epoch of acknoAvledged representation. But 
in the reigns of Edward III. and his three successors, about 
ninety j)laces, on an aA^erage, returned members, so that Ave 
may reckon this part of the Commons at one hundred and 
eighty. These, if regular in their duties, might appear an 
overbalance for the seventy-four knights Avho sat with them. 
But the dignity of ancient lineage, territorial wealth, and 
military character, in times when the feudal spirit was hardly 
extinct and that of chivalry at its height, made these burghers 
veil their heads to the landed aristocracy. It is pretty mani- 
fest that the knights, though doubtless with some support 
from the representatives of toAvns. sustained the chief brunt 

19 Brady on Boroughs, p. 13'2, etc. 



English Const. MEMBERS OF THE COMMONS. 489 

of battle against the crown. The rule and intention of our old 
constitution was, that each county, city, or borough should 
elect deputies out of its own body, resident among themselves, 
and consequently acquainted with their necessities and griev- 
ances. It would be very interesting to discover at what time, 
and by what degrees, the practice of election swerved from 
this strictness. But I have not been able to trace many steps 
of the transition. The number of practising lawyers who sat 
in Parliament, of which there are several complaints, seems to 
afford an inference that it had begun in the reign of Edward 
III. Besides several petitions of the Commons that none but 
knights or reputable squires should be returned for shires, an 
ordinance was made in the forty-sixth of his reign that no 
lawyer practising in the King's Court, nor sheriff during his 
shrievalty, be returned knight for a county, because these 
lawyers put forward many petitions in the name of the Com- 
mons Avhich only concerned their clients. This, probably, was 
truly alleged, as we may guess from the vast number of pro- 
posals for changing the course of legal process which till the 
rolls during this reign. It is not to be doubted, however, that 
many practising lawyers were men of landed estate in their 
respective counties. 

An act in the first year of Henry V. directs that none be 
chosen knights, citizens, or burgesses who are not resident 
within the place for which they are returned on the day of 
the date of the writ. This statute apparently indicates a point 
of time when the deviation from the line of law was frequent 
enough to attract notice, and yet not so established as to pass 
for an unavoidable irregularity. Even at the time when it was 
enacted, the law had probably, as such, very little effect. But 
still the plurality of elections were made according to ancient 
usage, as well as statute, out of the constituent body. Tlie 
contrary instances were exceptions to the rule, but exceptions 
increasing continually till they subverted the rule itself. 
Prynne has remarked that we chiefly find Cornish surnames 
among the representatives of Cornwall, and those of Northern 
families among the returns from the North. Nor do the mem- 
bers for shires and towns seem to have been much inter- 
changed — the names of the former belonging to the most 
ancient families, while those of the latter have a more ple- 
beian caste. In the reign of Edward IV., and not before, a 
very few of the burgesses bear the addition of esqiiire in the 
returns, which became universal in the middle of the suc- 
ceeding century. 



490 HOUSE OF LOllDS. Chap. VII. Part III. 

Even county elections seem in general, at least in the four- 
teenth century, to have been ill attended, and left to the 
influence of a fcAv powerful and active persons. A petitioner 
against an undue return, in the 12th of EdAvard II., conijjlains 
that, whereas he had been chosen knight for Devon by Sir 
AVilliam Martin, bishop of Exeter, witli the consent of the 
county, yet the sheriff had returned another. In several in- 
dentures of a much later date a few persons only seem to have 
been concerned in the election, though the assent of the com- 
munity be expressed. These irregularities, which it would be 
exceedingly erroneous to convert, with Hume, into lawful cus- 
toms, resulted from the abuses of the sheriff's poAver, which, 
AAdien Parliament sat only for a fcAV weeks, with its hands full 
of business, were almost sure to escape Avith impunity. They 
Avere sometimes, also, countenanced, or rather instigated, by 
the crown, wliich, having recovered in EdAvard II. 's reign the 
prerogative of naming the sheriffs, surrendered by an act of 
Ids father, filled that office Avitli its creatures, and constantly 
disregarded the statute forbidding their continuance beyond a 
year. Without searching for every passage that might illus- 
trate the interference of the croAvn in elections, I Avill mention 
one or two leading instances. When Richard II. Avas medi- 
tating to overturn the famous commission of reform, he sent 
f (;r some of the sheriffs, and required them to permit no knight 
or burgess to be elected to the next Parliament Avithout the 
approbation of the king and his council. The sheriffs replied 
that the commons woidd maintain their ancient privilege of 
electing their OAvn representatives. The Parliament of 1397, 
Avliich attainted his enemies and left the constitution at his 
mercy, Avas cliosen, as Ave are told, by dint of intimidation and 
influence. 

§ 18. The House of Lords, as Ave left it in the reign of 
Henry III., was entirely composed of such persons holding 
lands by barony as Avere summoned by particular Avrit of Par- 
liament.' Tenure and summons Avere both essential at this 
time in order to render any one a lord of Parliament — the 
first, by the ancient constitution of our feudal monarchy from 
the Conquest ; the second, by some regulation or usage of 
doubtful origin, Avhich Avas thoroughly established before the 
conclusion of Henry III.'s reign. This produced, of course, a 
very marked difference between the greater and the lesser, or 
unparliamentary barons. The tenure of the latter, hoAvever, 
still subsisted ; and, though too inconsiderable to be mem- 
bers of the legislature, they paid relief as barons, they might 



English Const. TENURE OF LORDS SPIRITUAL. 491 

be challenged on juries, and, as I presume, by parity of reason- 
ing, were entitled to trial by their peerage. These lower 
barons, or more commonly tenants by parcel of baronies,-" may 
be dimly traced to the latter years of Edward III. IJut many 
of them were successively summoned to Parliament, and thus 
recovered the former lustre of their rank, while the rest fell 
gradually into the station of commoners, as tenants by simple 
knight-service. 

As tenure Avithout summons did not entitle any one to the 
privileges of a Lord of Parliament, so no spiritual person at 
least ought to have been summoned without baronial tenure. 
Great irregularities prevailed in the rolls of Chancery, from 
which the writs to spiritual and temporal peers were taken — 
arising in part, perhaps, from negligence, in part from wilful 
perversion ; so that many abbots and priors, who had no 
baronial tenure, were summoned at times and subsequently 
omitted, of whose actual exemption we have no record. Out 
of 122 abbots and 41 priors who at some time or other sat in 
l*arliament, but twenty-five of the former and tAvo of the latter 
were constantly summoned ; the names of forty occur only 
once, and those of thirty-six others not more than five times. 
Their want of baronial tenure, in all probability, prevented the 
repetition of writs which accident or occasion had caused to 
issue. -^ 

The ancient temporal peers are supposed to have been inter- 
mingled with persons who held nothing of the crown by bar- 
ony, but attended in Parliament solely by virtue of the king's 
prerogative exercised in the writ of summons. These have 
been called Bai-ons hy Writ ; and it seems to be denied by no 
one that, at least under the first three EdAvards, there were 
some of this description in Parliament. But, after all the 
labors of Dugdale and others in tracing the genealogies of 
our ancient aristocracy, it is a problem of much difficulty to 
distinguish these from the territorial barons. As the latter 
honors descended to female heirs, they passed into new fam- 
ilies and new names, so that we can hardly decide of one sum- 

2f Baronies were often divided by descent among females into many parts, each 
retaining its cliaracter as a fractional member of a barouy. The tenants in such 
case were said to hold of the king by the third, fourth, or twentieth part of a barouy, 
and did service or paid relief in such proportion. 

21 It is worthy of observation that the spiritual peers summoned to Parliament 
were in general considerably more numerous than the temporal. This appears, 
among other causes, to have saved the Church from that sweeping reformation of its 
wealth, and perhaps its doctrines, which the Commons were thoroughly inclined 
to make under Richard II. and Henry IV. Thus the reduction of the spiritual lords 
by tlie dissolution of monasteries was indispensably required to bring the ecclesiaa- 
tical order into due subjection to the state. 



492 BARONS CALLED BY WRIT. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

moned for the first time to Parliament that he did not inherit 
the possession of a feudal barony. Husbands of baronial 
heiresses were frequently summoned in their wives' right, but 
by their own names. They even sat after the death of their 
wives, as tenants by the courtesy. If we judge, however, by 
the lists of those summoned, according to the best means in 
our power, it will appear that the regular barons by tenure 
were all along very far more numerous than those called by 
writ; and that from the end of Edward III.'s reign no spirit- 
ual persons, and few if any laymen, except peers created by 
patent, were summoned to Parliament who did not hold terri- 
torial baronies. 

With respect to those who were indebted for their seats 
among the Lords to the king's writ, there are two material 
(piestions — whether they acquired an hereditary nobility by 
virtue of the writ ; and, if this be determined against them, 
whether they had a decisive or merely a deliberative voice in 
the house. Now, for the first question, it seems that, if the 
writ of summons conferred an estate of inheritance, it must 
have done so either by virtue of its terms or by established 
construction and precedent. But the writ contains no words 
by which such an estate can in law be limited ; it summons 
the person addressed to attend in Parliament in order to give 
his advice on the public business, but by no means imj)lies 
that his advice will be required of his heirs, or even of him- 
self, on any other occasion.. We find that no less than ninety- 
eight laymen were summoned once only to Parliament, none 
of their names occurring afterwards ; and fifty others two, 
three, or four times. Some were constantly summoned during 
their lives, none of whose posterity ever attained that honor. 
The course of proceeding, therefore, previous to the accession 
of Henry VII., by no means warrants the doctrine which was 
held in the latter end of Elizabeth's reign, and has since been 
too fully established by repeated precedents to be shaken by 
any reasoning. The foregoing observations relate to the more 
ancient history of our constitution, and to the ])lain matter-of- 
fact as to those times, without considering what political cause 
there might be to. prevent the crown from introducing occa- 
sional counsellors into the House of Lords. 

It is manifest by many passages in these records that ban- 
nerets were frequently summoned to the upper house of Par- 
liament, constituting a distinct class inferior to barons, though 
generally named together, and ultimately confounded with 
them. Barons are distinguished by the appellation of Sire j 



English Const. BANNERETS IN THE LORDS. 493 

bannerets have only that of JMonsieur, as le Sire de Berkeley, 
le Sire de Fitzwalter, Monsieur liichard Scrop, Monsieur Kich- 
ard Stafford. The distinction, however, between barons and 
bannerets died away by degrees. In the second of Henry VI., 
Scrop of Bolton is called le Sire de Scrop — a proof that he 
was then reckoned among the barons. The bannerets do not 
often appear afterwards by that appellation as members of 
the upper house. Bannerets, or, as they are' called, banrents, 
are enumerated among the orders of Scottish nobility in the 
3^ear 1428, when the statute directing the common lairds or 
tenants in capite to send representatives was enacted ; and a 
modern historian justly calls them an intermediate order be- 
tween the peers and lairds. Perhaps a consideration of these 
facts, which have frecpiently been overlooked, may tend in 
some measure to explain the occasional discontinuance, or 
sometimes the entire cessation, of writs of summons to an in- 
dividual or his descendants ; since we may conceive that ban- 
nerets, being of a dignity much inferior to that of barons, had 
no such inheritable nobility in their blood as rendered their 
Parliamentary privileges a njatter of right. But whether all 
those who without any baronial tenure received their writs of 
summons to Parliament belonged to the order of bannerets, I 
cannot pretend to affirm ; though some passages in the rolls 
might rather lead to such a supposition. 

The second question relates to the right of suffrage pos- 
sessed by these temporary members of the upper house. It 
might seem plausible, certainly, to conceive that the real and 
ancient aristocracy would not permit their powers to be im- 
paired by numbering the votes of such as the king might 
jjlease to send among them, however they might allow them 
to assist in their debates. But I am much more inclined to 
suppose that they were in all respects on an equality with 
other peers during their actual attendance in Parliament. 
For, 1. They are summoned by the same writ as the rest, and 
their names are confused among them in the lists ; whereas 
tlie judges and ordinary counsellors are called by a separate 
writ, vobiscu.m et caeteris de consilio nostro, and their names 
are entered after those of the peers. 2. Some, who do not 
appear to have held land baronies, were constantly summoned 
from father to son, and thus became hereditary lords of 
Parliament through a sort of prescriptive right, which prob- 
ably was the foundation of extending the same privilege 
afterwards to the descendants of all who had once been sum- 
moned. There is no evidence that the family of Scrope, for 



494 CREATION OF PEERS. Chap. VIII, Pakt III. 

example, which, was eminent under Edward III. and subse- 
quent kings, and gave rise to two branches, the lords of 
Bolton and Masham, inherited any territorial honor. 3. It 
is very difficult to obtain any direct proof as to the right of 
voting, because the rolls of Parliament do not take notice of 
any debates ; but there happens to exist one remarkable pas- 
sage in which the suffrages of the Lords are individually 
specified. " 

§ 19. The next method of conferring an honor of peerage 
was by creation in Parliament. This was adopted by Edward 
III. in several instances, though always I believe for the 
higher titles of duke or earl. It is laid down by lawyers that 
whatever the king is said in an ancient record to have done in 
full Parliament must be taken to have proceeded from the 
wliole legislature. As a question of fact, indeed, it might be 
doubted whether, in many proceedings where this expression 
is used, and especially in the creation of peers, the assent of 
the Commons was specifically and deliberately given. It 
seems hardly consonant to the circumstances of their order 
under Edward III. to suppose their sanction necessary in 
what seemed so little to concern their interest. Yet there 
is an instance in the fortieth year of that prince where the 
Lords individually, and the Commons with one voice, are 
declared to have consented, at the king's request, that the 
Lord de Coney, who had married his daughter, and was already 
possessed of estates in England, might be raised to the dignity 
of an earl, whenever the king should determine what earldom 
he would confer upon him. Under Ilichard II. the marquisate 

=- III the first Parliament of Henrv IV. tlie Lords were requested by the Earl of 
Northiiniliirland to declare wliat should be done with the late King Richard. The 
lords then ])reseut ajfreed tliat lie should be detained in safe custody; anil on account 
of the iiiiportMiice of this matter it seems to have been thought necessary to enter 
their names upon the roll in tliese words : the names of the lords concurring in their 
answer to the said question here follow; to wit, the Arclibishop of Canterbury and 
fourteen other bislio|)s; seven abbots; the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, and 
six earls; nineteen barons, styled thus — le Sire de Koos, or le Sire de Grey de 
Ruthyn. Thus far the entry has nothing singular; but then follow these nine 
name's : Jlonsieur Henry Percy, Monsieur Hichar<l Scrop, le Sire Fitz-hugh, le Sire de 
Bergevenv. le Sire de Lomley, le Haron de Greystock, le Baron de Hilton, INIonsieur 
Tliomas Krpvngham, chambeii.ayn, Jlonsieur Mayliewe Gournay. Of these nine five 
were und()ul)tedlv barons, from whatever cause misplaced in order. Scrop was 
summoned bv writ; but his title of Monsieur, by wliicli he is invariably denomi- 
nated, would of itself ere.ite a strong suspicion that he was no baron, and in 
another place we find him reckoned among the bannerets. The other three do not 
appear to have been summoned, their writs probably being lost. One of them, Sir 
Thomas Erpynghain, a statesman well known in the history of those times, is said 
to have been' a banneret ; certaiiilv he was not a baron. It is not unlikely that the 
two others, Henrv Percv (Hotspur) and Gournay, an officer of the household, were 
also bMiinerets; they cannot, at least, be supposed to be baro.is, neither were they 
ever summoned to any subsequent Parliament. Yet in the only record we possess of 
votes actually given "in the House of Lords they appear lo liave been reckoned 
among the rest. 



English Const. CLERGY TO ATTEND PARLIAMENT. 495 

of Dublin is granted to Vere by full consent of all the estates. 
But this instrument, besides the unusual name of dignity, 
contained an extensive jurisdiction and authority over Ireland. 
In the same reign Lancaster was made Duke of Guienne, 
and the Duke of York's son created Earl of Rutland, to hold 
during his father's life. The consent of the Lords and Com- 
mons is expressed in their patents, and they are entered upon 
the roll of Parliament. Henry V. created his brothers Dukes 
of Bedford and Gloucester, by request of the Lords and Com- 
mons. But the patent of Sir John Cornwall, in the tenth of 
Henry VI., declares him to be made Lord Fanhope "by 
consent of the Lords, in the presence of the three estates 
of Parliament ; " as if it were designed to show that the 
Commons had not a legislative voice in the creation of peers. 

§ 20. The mention I have made of creating ]ieers by act of 
Parliament has partly anticipated the modern form of letters 
patent, with which the other was nearly allied. The first 
instance of a barony conferred by patent was in the tenth 
year of Richard II., when Sir John Holt, a judge of the 
Common Pleas, was created Lord Beauchamp, of Kidder- 
minster. Holt's patent, however, passed while Richard was 
endeavoring to act in an arbitrary manner ; and in fact he never 
sat in Parliament, having been attainted in tliat of the next 
year by the name of Sir John Holt. In a number of subse- 
quent patents, down to the reign of Henry VII., the assent of 
Parliament is expressed, though it frequently happens that no 
mention of it occurs in the Parliamentary roll. And in some 
instances the roll speaks to the consent of Parliament where 
the patent itself is silent. 

§ 21. It is now, perhaps, scarcely known by many persons 
not unversed in the constitution of their country that, besides 
the bishops and baronial abbots, the inferior clergy were reg- 
ularly summoned at every Parliament. In the writ of sum- 
mons to a bishop he is still directed to cause the dean of his 
cathedral church, the archdeacon of his diocese, with one proc- 
tor from the chapter of the former, and two from the body of 
his clergy, to attend with him at the place of meeting. This 
might by an unobservant reader be confounded with the 
summons to the convocation, which is composed of the same 
constituent parts, and by modern usage is made to assemble 
on the same day. But it may easily be distinguished by this 
dilference — that the convocation is provincial, and summoned 
by the metropolitans of Canterbury and York ; whereas the 
clause -commonly denominated prcemimientes (from its first 



496 CLERGY TO ATTEND PARLIAMENT. Cii. VITI. Pt. IIL 

word) in tlie writ to eaeli Lisliop proceeds from the crown, and 
enjoins the attendance of the clergy at tlie national council of 
Parliament. 

The first unequivocal instance of representatives appearing 
for the lower clergy is in the year 1255, when they are ex- 
pressly named by the author of the Annals of Burton. They 
preceded, therefore, by a few years the House of Commons ; 
but the introduction of each was founded upon the same prin- 
ciple. The king required the clergy's money, but dared not 
take it without their consent. In the double Parliament, if so 
we may call it, summoned in the 11th of Edward I., to meet at 
Northampton and York, and divided according to the two 
ecclesiastical provinces, the proctors of chapters for each prov- 
ince, but not those of the diocesan clergy, were summoned 
through a royal writ addressed to the archbishops. Upon 
account of the absence of any deputies from the lower clergy, 
these assemblies refused to grant a subsidy. The proctors of 
both descriptions appear to have been summoned by the prse- 
munientes clause in the 22d, 23d, 21th, 2Sth, and o5th years of 
the same king ; but in some other Parliaments of his reign the 
prtemunientes clause is omitted. The same irregularity con- 
tinued under his successor ; and the constant usage of inserting 
this clause in the bishop's writ is dated from the 2Sth of 
Edward III. 

It is highly probable that Edward I., whose legislative mind 
was engaged in modelling the constitution on a comprehensive 
scheme, designed to make the clergy an effective branch of 
Parliament, however their continual resistance may have de- 
feated the accom{)lishment of this intention. We find an entry 
upon the roll of his Parliament at Carlisle, containing a list of 
all the proctors deputed to it by the several dioceses of the 
kingdom. This may be reckoned a clear proof of their Paren- 
liamentary attendance during his reign under the prtemuni- 
tes clause ; since the province of Canterbury could not have 
been present in convocation at a city beyond its limits. And, 
indeed, if we were to found our judgment merely on the lan- 
guage used in these writs, it would l)e hard to resist a very 
strange paradox, that the clergy were not only one of the 
three estates of the realm, but as essential a member of the 
legislature by tlieir representatives as the Commons.-^ They 

2' Tlie lower liouso of convocation in 1547, terrified at tlie projjress of reformation, 
petitioned tliat, "according to the tenor of the liing's writ, and the ancient customs 
of the realm, tliey might liave room and place and he associated wilii tlie Commons 
in the nether house of this present Parliament, as memhers of the commonwealth 
and the king's most humble subjects." — Burnet's Hist, of Reformation, vol. ii. ; Ap- 



English Const. CLERGY TO ATTEND PARLIAMENT. 497 

are summoned in the earliest year extant (2,3 Edward I.) " ad 
tractanduni, ordinandum et faciendum nobiscum, et cum csete- 
ris prselatis, proceribus, ac aliis incolis regni nostri ; " in that 
of the next year, " ad ordinandum de quantitate et modo sub- 
sidii ; " in that of the twenty-eighth, " ad faciendum et consen- 
tiendum his, quae tunc de communi consilio ordinari contigerit." 
In later times it ran sometimes " ad faciendum et consentien- 
dum," sometimes only ad consentiendum ; which, from the fifth 
of Eichard II., has been the term invariably adopted. Now, 
as it is usual to infer from the same words, when introduced 
into the writs for election of the Commons, that they possessed 
an enacting power, implied in the words ad faciendum, or at 
least to deduce the necessity of their assent from the words ad 
consentiendum, it should seem to follow that the clergy were 
invested, as a branch of the Parliament, with rights no less 
extensive. It is to be considered how we can reconcile these 
apparent attributes of political power with the unquestionable 
facts that almost all laws, even while they continued to attend, 
were passed without their concurrence, and that, after some 
time, they ceased altogether to comply with the writ.^* 

The solution of this difficulty can only be found in that 
estrangement from the common law and the temporal courts 
which the clergy throughout Europe were disposed to effect. 
In this country their ambition defeated its own ends ; and 
while they endeavored by privileges and immunities to sepa- 
rate themselves from the people, they did not perceive that 
the line of demarcation thus strongly traced would cut them 
off from the sympathy of common interests. Everything 
which they could call of ecclesiastical cognizance was drawn 
into their own courts ; while the administration of what they 
contemned as a barbarous system, the temporal law of the 
land, fell into the hands of lay judges. But these were men 
not less subtle, not less amlntious, not less attached to their 
profession than themselves ; and wielding, as they did in the 
courts of Westminster, the delegated sceptre of judicial 
sovereignty, they soon began to control the spiritual jurisdic- 
tion, and to establish the inherent supremacy of the common 

pendix, No. 17. This assertion tliat tlie clergy had ever been associated as one body 
with tlie Commons is not borne out by anyttiing tliat appears on our records, and is 
contradicted by many i)assages. But it is said tliat the clergy were actually so united 
with the Commons iiithe Irish Parliament till the Reformation. — Gilbert's Hist, of 
tlie K.xchequer, p. 5". 

-^ Tlie pra?munientes clause in a bishop's writ of summons was so far regarded 
down to the Reformation, that proctors were elected, and their names returned upon 
tlie writ : though the clergy never attended from tlie beginning of the lifteenth cen- 
tury, and gave their money only in convocation. Since the Reformation the clause 
has been preserved for form merely in the writ. 



498 CLERGY TO ATTEND PARLIAMENT. Ch. VIIL Pt. IIL 

law. From this time an inveterate animosity subsisted be- 
tween the two courts, the vestiges of which have only been 
effaced by the liberal wisdom of modern ages. The general 
love of the common law, however, with the great weight of its 
professors in the king's council and in Parliament, kept the 
clergy in surprising subjection. JSTone of our kings after 
Henry III. were bigots ; and the constant tone of the Com- 
mons serves to show tliat the English nation was thoroughly 
averse to ecclesiastical influence, whether of their own Church 
or the See of Rome. 

It was natural, therefore, to withstand the interference of 
the clergy summoned to rarliament in legislation, as much as 
that of the spiritual court in temporal jurisdiction. With the 
ordinary subjects, indeed, of legislation they had little con- 
cern. The oppressions of the king's purveyors, or escheators, 
or officers of the forests, the abuses or defects of the common 
laws, the regulations necessary for trading-towns and sea- 
ports, were matters that touched them not, and to which their 
consent was never required. And, as they well knew there 
was no design in summoning their attendance but to obtain 
money, it was with great reluctance that they obeyed the 
royal writ, which was generally obliged to be enforced by an 
archiepiscopal mandate. Thus, instead of an assembly of 
deputies from an estate of the realm, they became a synod or 
convocation. And it seems probable that in most, if not all, 
instances where the clergy are said in the roll of Parliament 
to have presented their petitions, or are otherwise mentioned 
as a deliberative body, we should suppose the convocation 
alone of the province of Canterbury to be intended. For that 
of York seems to have been always considered as inferior, and 
even ancillary, to the greater province, voting subsidies, and 
even assenting to canons, without deliberation, in compliance 
with the example of Canterbury ; the convocation of which 
province consequently assumed the importance of a national 
council. But in either point of view the ]n-oceedings of this 
ecclesiastical assembly, collateral in a certain sense to Parlia- 
ment, yet very intimately connected with it, whether sitting 
by virtue of the prGemunientes clause or otherwise, deserves 
some notice in a constitutional history. 

In the sixth year of Edward III. the proctors of the clergy 
are specially mentioned as present at the speech pronounced 
by the king's commissioner, and retired, along with the prel- 
ates, to consult together upon the business submitted to their 
deliberation. They proposed, accordingly, a sentence of ex- 



English Const. JURISDICTION OF KING'S COUNCIL. 499 

communication against disturbers of the peace, whicli was 
assented to by tlie Lords and Commons. The clergy are said 
afterwards to have had leave, as well as the knights, citizens, 
and burgesses, to return to their homes, the prelates and peers 
continuing with the king. Tliis appearance of the clergy in 
full Parliament is not, perhaps, so decisively proved by any 
later record. But in the eighteenth of the same reign several 
petitions of the clergy are granted by the king and his council, 
entered on the roll of Parliament, and even the statute roll, 
and in some respects are still part of our law. To these it 
seems highly probable that the Commons gave no assent ; and 
they may be reckoned among the other infringements of their 
legislative rights. It is remarkable that in the same Parlia- 
ment the Commons, as if apprehensive of what was in prepara- 
tion, besought the king that no petition of the clergy might be 
granted till he and his council should have considered whether 
it would turn to the prejudice of tlie Lords or Commons. 

In the first session of Ilichard II. the prelates and clergy 
of both provinces are said to have presented their schedule of 
petitions which appear upon the roll, and three of which are 
the foundation of statutes unassented to in all probability by 
the Commons. If the clergy of both provinces were actually 
present, as is here asserted, it must of course have been as a 
House of Parliament, and not of convocation. It rather seems, 
so far as we can trust to the phraseology of records, that the 
clergy sat also in a national assembly under the king's writ in 
the second year of the same king. Upon other occasions dur- 
ing the same reign, where the representatives of the clergy are 
alluded to as a deliberative body, sitting at the same time with 
the Parliament, it is impossible to ascertain its constitution ; 
and, indeed, even from those already cited we cannot draw 
any positive inference. But whether in convocation or in 
Parliament, they certainly formed a legislative council in 
ecclesiastical matters by the advice and consent of which 
alone, without that of the Commons (I can say nothing as to 
the Lords), Edward III. and even Richard II. enacted laws to 
bind the laity. There is a still more cons]ucuous instance of 
this assumed prerogative in the memoralde statute against 
heresy in the second of Henry IV. ; wliich can hardly be 
deemed anything else tlian an infringement of the rights 
of Parliament, more clearly establisht^d at that time than 
at the accession of Richard II. Petitions of the Commons 
relative to spiritual matters, however fi'equently proposed, in 
few or no instances obtained the king's assent so as to pass 



500 JURISDICTION OF Chap. VIII. Part III. 

into statutes, unless approved by the convocation. But, on the 
other hand, scarcely any temporal laws appear to have passed 
by the concurrence of the clergy. Two instances only, so far 
as I know, are on record ; the Parliament held in the eleventh 
of llichard II. is annulled by that in the twenty-first of his 
reign, " with the assent of the lords spiritual and temporal, 
and the proctors of the clergy, and the Commons ; " and the 
statute entailing tlie crown on the children of Henry IV. is 
said to be enacted on the petition of the })relates, nobles, clergy, 
and commons. Both these were stronger exertions of legisla- 
lative authority than ordinary acts of Parliament, and were 
very likely to be questioned in succeeding times. 

§ 22. The supreme judicature, which had been exercised by 
the King's Court, was diverted, about the reign of John, into 
three channels — the tribunals of King's Bench, Common 
Pleas, and the Exchequer. These became the regular foun- 
tains of justice, which soon almost absorbed the provincial 
jurisdictions of the sheriff and lord of manor. But the origi- 
nal institution, having been designed for ends of state, police, 
and revenue, fully as much as for the determination of private 
suits, still preserved the most eminent parts of its authority ; 
for the king's ordinary or privy council, which is the usual 
style from the reign of Edward I., seems to have been no other 
than the King's Court (curia regis) of older times, being com- 
posed of the same persons, and having, in a ])rincipal degree, 
the same subjects of deliberation. It consisted of the chief 
ministers ; as the chancellor, ' treasurer, lord steward, lord 
admiral, lord marshal, the keejier of the privy seal, the cham- 
berlain, treasurer, and comptroller of the household, the chan- 
cellor of the J^xchequer, the master of the wardrobe ; and of 
the judges, king's sergeant, and attorney-general, the master 
of the rolls, and justices in eyre, who at that time were not 
the same as the judges at Westminster. When all these were 
called together, it was a full council ; but where the business 
was of a more contracted nature, those only who were fittest 
to advise were summoned — the chancellor and judges for 
matters of law ; the officers of state for what concerned the 
revenue or household.^ 

25 The words "privy council" are said not to be iisei! till after the reign of Henry 
VI.; tlie former style was " ordinary " or '■continual council." Hut a distinction 
had always been made, according to the nature of the business; tlie great officers of 
state, or, as we might now say, the ministei-s, had no occasion for tlie presence of 
judges or any lawyers in the secret councils of the crown. They become, therefore, 
a council of government, thoiigh always nieinbers of the consilium ordhiarhim; and, 
in the former capacity, began to keep formal records of tlieir proceedings. The acts 
of this council — though, as I have just said, it bore as yet no distinguishing name — 
are extant from the year l.SSfi, and lor seventy years afterwards are known tlirongli 
the valuable publication of Sir Harris Nicolas. 



English Const. THE KIXU'S COUNCIL. 501 

The business of tliis council, out of Parliament, may be re- 
duced to two heads — its deliberative otiice as a council of 
advice, and its decisive power of jurisdiction. With respect to 
the tirst, it obviously comprehended all subjects of political 
deliberation, which were usually referred to it by the king; 
this being in fact the administration of governing council of 
state, the distinction of a cabinet being introduced in compara- 
tively modern times. But there were likewise a vast number 
of petitions continually presented to the council, upon which 
they proceeded no farther than to sort, as it were, and for- 
ward them by indorsement to the proper courts, or advise the 
suitor what remedy he had to seek. Thus some petitions are 
answered, " this cannot be done without a new law ; " some 
were turned over to the regular court, as the Chancery or 
King's Bench ; some of greater moment were indorsed to 
be heard '^ before the Great Council ; " some, concerning the 
king's interest, were referred to the Chancery, or select persons 
of the council. 

The coercive authority exercised by this standing council of 
the king was far more important. It may be divided into acts, 
legislative and judicial. As for the first, many ordinances 
were made in council ; sometimes upon request of the Commons 
in Parliament ; who felt themselves better qualified to state a 
grievance than a remedy ; sometimes without any pretence, 
unless the usage of government, in the infancy of our constitu- 
tion, may be thought to afford one. These were always of a 
temporary or partial nature, auTl were considered as regulations 
not sufficiently important to demand a new statute. But the 
council frequently so much exceeded what the growing spirit 
of public liberty would permit, that it gave rise to complaint in 
Parliament. The Commons petition, in 13 R. II., that "neither 
the chancellor nor the king's council, after tlie close of Parlia- 
ment, may make any ordinance against the common law, or the 
ancient customs of the land, or the statutes made heretofore or 
to be made in this Parliament ; but that the common law have 
its course for all the people, and no judgment be rendered 
without due legal process." The king answers, " Let it be 
done as has been usual heretofore, saving the prerogative ; and 
if any one is aggrieved, let him show it specially, and right 
shall be done him." This unsatisfactory answer proves the 
arbitrary spirit in which Richard was determined to govern. 

The judicial power of the council was in some instances 
founded upon particular acts of Parliament, giving it power to 
bear and determine certain causes. Many petitions likewise 



502 JURISDICTION OF Chap. VITI. Part III. 

were referred to it from Parliament, especially where they were 
left unanswered by reason of a dissolution. But, independently 
of this delegated authoiity, it is certain that the king's council 
did anciently exercise, as well out of Parliament as in it, a very 
great jurisdiction, both in causes criminal and civil. Some, 
however, have contended that whatever they did in this respect 
was illegal, and an encroachment upon the common law and 
Magna Charta. And be the common law what it may, it seems 
an indisputable violation of the charter in its most admirable 
and essential article, to drag men in questions of their freehold 
or liberty before a tribunal which neither granted them a trial 
by their peers nor always respected the law of the land. 
Against this usurpation the patriots of those times never 
ceased to lift their voices. Nothing, however, would prevail 
on the council to surrender so eminent a power, and, though 
usurped, yet of so long a continuance. Cases of arbitrary im- 
prisonment frequently occurred, and were remonstrated against 
by the Commons. The right of every freeman in that cardinal 
point was as indubitable, legally speaking, as at this day ; but 
the courts of law were afraid to exercise their remedial func- 
tions in defiance of so poAverful a tribunal. After the accession 
of the Lancastrian family, these, like other grievances, became 
rather less frequent ; but the Commons remonstrated several 
times, even in the minority of Henry VI., against the council's 
interference in matters cognizable at common law. In these 
later times the civil jurisdiction of the council was principally 
exercised in conjunction with the Chancery, and accordingly 
they are generally named together in the complaint. The chan- 
cellor having the great seal in his custody, the council usually 
borrowed its process from his court. This was returnable into 
chancery even where the business was depending before the 
council. Xor were the two jurisdictions less intimately allied 
in their character, each being of an equitable nature ; and 
equity, as then practised, being little else than innovation and 
encroachment on the course of law. This part, long since the 
most important of the chancellor's judicial function cannot be 
traced beyond the time of Itichard IL, Avhen, the practice of 
feoffments to uses having been introduced, without any legal 
remedy to secure the cestui que use, or usufructuary, against 
his feoffees, the Court of Chancery undertook to enforce this 
species of contract by process of its own. 

Such was the nature of the king's ordinary council in itself, 
as the organ of his executive sovereignty, and such the juris- 
diction which it habitually exercised. But it is also to be con- 



Enulisu Const. THE KINGI^S COUNCIL. 503 

sidered in its relation to tlie Parliament, dnring whose session, 
either singly or in conjunction with the Lords' house, it was 
particularly conspicuous. The great officers of state, whether 
peers or not, the judges, the king's sergeant, and attorney-gen- 
eral, were, from the earliest times, as the latter still continue 
to be, summoned by special writs to the upper house. But 
while the writ of a peer runs " ad tracta-ndum nobiscum et cum 
cseteris praelatis, magnatibus et proceribus," that directed to one 
of the judges is only "ad tractandum nobiscum et cum cseteris 
de consilio nostro ; " and the seats of the latter are upon the 
wool-sacks at one extrendty of the house. 

In the reigns of Edward I. and II. the council appear to have 
been the regular advisers of the king in passing laws to which 
the houses of Parliament had assented. The preambles of most 
statutes of this period exju-ess their concurrence. Thus the 
statute Westminster I. is said to be the act of the king by his 
council, and by the assent of archbishops, bishops, abbots, 
priors, earls, barons, and all the commonalty of the realm being 
hither summoned. Still more striking conclusions are to be 
drawn from the petitions addressed to the council by both 
houses of Parliament. In the eighth of Edward II. tliere are 
four petitions from the Commons to the king and his council, 
one from the Lords alone, and one in which both appear to have 
joined. Later Parliaments of the same reign present us with 
several more instances of the like nature. Thus in IS Edward 
II. a petition begins, "To our lord the king, and to his council, 
the archbishops, bishops, prelates, earls, barons, and others of 
the commonalty of England, show," etc. 

But from the beginning of Edward III.'s reign it seems that 
the council and the Lords' house in Parliament were often 
blended together into one assembly. This was denominated 
the great council, being the lords spiritual and temporal, Avith 
the king's ordinary council annexed to them, as a council 
within a council. And even in much earlier times the Lords, 
as hereditary councillors, were, either whenever they thought 
fit to attend, or on special summonses by the king (it is hard 
to say which), assistant members of this council, both for ad- 
vice and for jurisdiction. This double capacity of the peerage, 
as members of the I'arliament or legislative assembly and of 
the deliberative and judicial council, throws a very great 
obscurity over the subject. However, we find that private 
petitions for redress were, even under Edward I., presented to 
the Lords in Parliament as much as to the ordinary council. 
The Parliament was considered a high court of justice, where 



504 THE GREAT COUNCIL. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

relief was to be given in cases where the course of law was 
obstructed, as well as where it was defective. Hence the in- 
termission of Parliament was looked upon as a delay of jus- 
tice, and tiieir annual meeting is demanded upon that ground. 
" The king," says Mete, " has his court in his council, in his 
rarliameuts, in the presence of bisho})S, earls, barons, lords, 
and other wise men, where the doubtful cases of judgments 
are resolved, and new remedies are provided against new in- 
juries, and justice is rendered to every man according to his 
desert." In the third year of Edward II. receivers of petitions 
began to be appointed at the opening of every Parliament, who 
usually transmitted them to the ordinary, but in some instances 
to the great council. These receivers were commonly three 
for England, and three for Ireland, AVales, Gascony, and 
other foreign dominions. There were likewise two corre- 
sponding classes of auditors or triers of petitions. These 
consisted partly of bishops or peers, partly of judges and other 
members of the council ; and they seem to have been in- 
stituted in order to disburden the council by giving answers to 
some })etitions. But aboiit the middle of Edward lll.'s time 
they ceased to act juridically in this respect, and confined 
themselves to transmitting petitions to the Lords of the 
council. 

The great council, according to the definition we have 
given, consisting of the lords spiritual and temporal, in con- 
junction with the ordinary council, or, in other words, of all 
who were severally summoned to Parliament, exercised a con- 
siderable jurisdiction, as well civil as criminal. In this 
jurisdiction it is the opinion of Sir M. Hale that the council, 
though not peers, had right of suffrage — an opinion very 
probable, when Ave recollect that the council by themselves, 
both in and out of Parliament, possessed in fact a judicial 
authority little inferior ; and that the king's delegated sov- 
ereignty in the administration of justice, rather than any 
intrinsic right of the peerage, is the foundation on which the 
judicature of the Lords must be supported. But in the time 
of Edward III. or Richard II. the Lords, by their ascendency, 
threw the judges and the rest of the council into shade, and 
took the decisive jurisdiction entirely to themselves, making 
use of their former colleagues but as assistants and advisers, 
as they still continue to be held in all the judicial proceedings 
of that house. 

Those statutes which restrain the king's ordinary council 
from disturbing men in their freehold rights, or questioning 



English -Const. CHARACTER OF GOVERNMENT. 505 

them for misdemeanors, have an equal application to the 
Lord's house in Parliament, thougli we do not frequently meet 
with complaints of the encroachments made by that assembly. 
There was, however, one class of cases tacitly excluded from 
the operation of those acts, in which the coercive jurisdiction 
of this high tribunal had great convenience — namely, where 
the ordinary course of justice was so much obstructed by the 
defending party, through riots, combinations of maintenance, 
or overawing influence, that no inferior court would find its 
process obeyed. Those ages, disfigured in their quietest season 
by rapine and oppression, afforded uo small number of cases 
that called for this interposition of a paramount authority. 
Another indubitable branch of this jurisdiction was in writs of 
error ; but it may be observed that their determination was 
very frequently left to a select committee of peers and coun- 
cillors. These, too, cease almost entirely with Henry IV., and 
were scarcely revived till the accession of James 1. 

§ 23. Although the restraining hand of Parliament was con- 
tinually growing more effectual, and the notions of legal right 
acquiring more precision, from the time of Magna Charta to 
the civil wars under Henry VI., we may justly say that the 
general tone of administration was not a little arbitrary. The 
whole fabric of English liberty rose step by step, through 
much toil and many sacrifices, each generation adding some 
new security to the work, and trusting that posterity would 
perfect the labor as well as enjoy the reward. 

Tliere is a material distinction to be taken between the exer- 
cise of the king's undeniable prerogative, however repugnant 
to our improved princi]iles of freedom, and the abuse or ex- 
tension of it to oppressive purposes. For we cannot fairly 
consider as part of our ancient constitution what the Parlia- 
ment Avas perpetually remonstrating against, and the statute- 
book is full of enactments to repress. It would be necessary 
to shut our eyes with deliberate })rejudice against the whole 
tenor of the most unquestionable authorities, against the peti- 
tions of the Commons, the acts of the legislature, the testi- 
mony of historians and lawyers, before we could assert that 
Engl ind acquiesced in those abuses and opi'ressions which it 
must be confessed she was unable fully to prevent. 

The word prerogative is of a peculiar import, and scarcely 
understood by those who come from the studies of political 
philosophy. We cannot define it by any theory of executive 
functions. All these may be comprehended in it, but also a 
great deal more. It is best, perhaps, to be understood by its 



506 PUliVEYANCE. Chap. VIII. *Pakt III. 

derivatioB, and has been said to be that law in case of the 
king which is hiw in no case of the subject.-^ Of tlie higher 
and more sovereign prerogatives I shall here say nothing ; they 
result from the nature of a monarchy, and have nothing very 
peculiar in tlieir character. But the smaller rights of the 
crown show better the original lineaments of our constitution. 
It is said commonly enough that all prerogatives are given for 
the subject's good. I must confess that no part of this asser- 
tion corresponds with my view of the subject. It neither 
appears to me that these prerogatives were ever given nor that 
they necessarily redound to the subject's good. Prerogative, 
in its old sense, might be detined an advantage obtained by 
the crown over the subject, in cases where their interest came 
into competition, by reason of its greater strength. This 
sprang from the nature of the Norman government, which 
rather resembled a scramble of wild beasts, where the strong- 
est takes the best share, than a system founded upon princi- 
ples of common utility. And, modihed as the exercise of most 
prerogatives has been by the more liberal tone which now per- 
vades our course of government, whoever attends to- the com- 
mon practice of courts of justice, and, still more, whoever 
consults the law-books, will not only be astonished at their 
extent and multiplicity, but very frequently at their injustice 
and severity. 

1. Purveyance. — The real prerogatives that might formerly 
be exerted were sometimes of so injurious a nature that we 
can hardly separate them from their abuse : a striking in- 
stance is that of purveyance, which, will at once illustrate the 
definition above given of a prerogative, the limits within 
which it was to be exercised, and its tendency to transgress 
them. This was a right of purchasing whatever was neces- 
sary for the king's household at a fair price, in preference to 
every competitor, and Avithout the consent of the owner. By 
the same prerogative, carriages and horses were impressed for 
the king's journeys, and lodgings provided for his attendants. 
This was defended on a pretext of necessity, or at least of 
great convenience to the sovereign, and was both of high an- 
tiquity and universal practice throughout Europe. Biit the 
royal purveyors had the utmost temptation, and doubtless no 
small store of precedents, to stretch this power beyond its 
legal boundary ; and not only to fix their own price too low, 
but to seize what they wanted without any payment at all, or 
with tallies, which were carried in vain to an empty exchequer. 

26 Blackstone's Comment, from Fiuch, vol. i., c. 7. 



English Const. FEUDAL EIGHTS. 507 

This gave rise to a number of petitions from the Commons, 
upon which statutes were often framed; but the evil was 
almost incurable in its nature, and never ceased till that pre- 
rogative was itself abolished. Purveyance, as I have already 
said, may serve to distinguish the defects from the abuses of 
our constitution. It was a reproach to ttie law that men 
should be compelled to send their goods without their consent ; 
it was a reproach to the administration that they were de- 
prived of them without payment. 

Tlie right of purchasing men's goods for the use of the 
king Avas extended, by a sort of analogy, to their labor. Thus 
Edward III. announces to all sheriffs that William of Wal- 
singham had a commission to collect as many painters as 
might suffice for ''our works in St. Stephen's Chapel, Westmin- 
ster, to be at our wages as long as shall be necessary," and to 
arrest and keep in prison all who should refuse or be refrac- 
tory, and enjoins them to lend their assistance. Windsor 
Castle owes its massive magniticence to laborers impressed 
from every part of the kingdom. There is even a commission 
from Edward IV. to take as many workmen in gold as were 
wanting, and employ them at the king's cost upon the trap- 
pings of himself and his household. 

2. Feudal Bights. — Another class of abuses, intimately 
connected with unquestionable though oppressive rights of the 
crown, originated in the feiidal tenure which bound all the 
lands of the kingdom. The king had indisputably a right to 
the wardship of his tenants in chivalry, and to the escheats 
or forfeitures of persons dying without heirs or attainted for 
treason. ■ But his officers, under pretence of wardship, took 
possession of lands not held immediately of the crown, claimed 
escheats wliere a right heir existed, and seized estates as for- 
feited wliich were protected by the statute of entails. The 
real owner had no remedy against this disposition but to pre- 
'fer his petition of right in Cliancery, or, which was probably 
more effectual, to procure a remonstrance of the House of 
Commons in his favor. Even where justice was finally ren- 
dered to him, he had no recompense for his damages ; and the 
escheaters were not less likely to repeat an iniquity by which 
they could not personally suffer. 

3. Forest Laws. — The charter of the forests, granted by 
Henry III. along with Magna Charta, had been designed to 
crush the flagitious system of oppression Avhich prevailed in 
those favorite haunts of the Norman kings. They had still, 
however, their peculiar jurisdiction, though from the time at 



508 CHAKACTER OF THE CONSTITUTION. Ch. VIII. Pt. III. 

least of Edward III. subject in some measure to the control 
of the King's Bench. The foresters, I suppose, might liud a 
compensation for their want of the common law in that easy 
and licentioiis way of life which they affected ; but the neigh- 
boring cultivators frequently suffered from the king's officers 
who attempted to recover those adjacent lands, or, as they 
were called, purlieus, which had been disafforested by the 
charter, and protected by frequent perambulations. Many 
petitions of the Commons relate to this grievance. 

4. Jurisdiction of Constable and Marshal. — The constable 
and marshal of England possessed a jurisdiction, the proper 
limits whereof were sufficiently narrow, as it seems, to have 
extended only to appeals of treason committed beyond sea, 
which were determined by combat, and to military offences 
within the realm. But these high officers frequently took upon 
them to inquire of treasons and felonies cognizable at com- 
mon law, and even of civil contracts and tresjiasses. 
This is no bad illustration of the state in Avhich our consti- 
tution stood under the Plantagenets. No color of right or of 
supreme prerogative was set up to justify a procedure so mani- 
festly repugnant to the great charter. For all remonstrances 
against these encroachments the king gave promises in return ; 
and a statute was enacted, in the thirteenth of Richard II., 
declaring the bounds of the constable and marshal's jurisdic- 
tion. It could not be denied, therefore, that all infringements 
of these acknowledged limits were illegal, even if they had a 
hundred-fold mcn-e actual precedents in their favor than can 
be supposed. But the abuse by no means ceased after the 
passing of tliis- statute, as several subsequent petitions that it 
might be better regarded will evince. 

§ 24. If I have faithfully represented thus far tlie history 
of our constitution, its essential character will appear to be 
a monarchy greatly limited by law, though retaining much 
power that was ill calculated to promote the public good, and 
swerving continually into an irregular course, which there was 
no restraint adequate to correct. But of all the notions that 
have been advanced as to the theory of this constitution, the 
least consonant to law and history is that which represents 
the king as merely an hereditary executive magistrate, the 
first officer of the state. A^liat advantages might result from 
such a form of government this is not the place to discuss. 
But it certainly was not the ancient constitution of England. 
There was nothing in this, absolutely nothing, of a repul/lican 
appearance. All seemed to grow out of the monarchy, and 



ENGi.isn Const. FOKTESCUE ON OUli CONSTITUTION. 509 

was referred to its advantage and honor. The voice of sup- 
plication, even in the stoutest disposition of the Commons, 
was always humble ; the j)rerogative was always named in 
large and jjompous expressions. Still more naturally may we 
expect to find in the law-books even an obsequious deference 
to power, from judges who scarcely ventured to consider it as 
their duty to defend the subject's freedom, and who beheld 
the gigantic image of prerogative, in the full play of its hun- 
dred arms, constantly before their eyes. Through this 
monarchical tone, Avhich certainly pervades all our legal 
authorities, a writer like Hume, accustomed to philoso})hical 
liberality as to the principles of government, and to the demo- 
cratical language which the modern aspect of the constitution 
and the liberty of printing have produced, fell hastily into 
the error of believing that all limitations of royal power dur- 
ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as much 
unsettled in law and in public opinion as they were liable to 
be violated by force. Though a contrary position has been 
sufficiently demonstrated, I conceive, by the series of Parlia- 
mentary proceedings which I have already produced, yet there 
is a passage in Sir John Fortescue's treatise " De Laudibus 
Legum Anglise," so explicit and weighty, that no writer on 
the English constitution can be excused from inserting it. 
This eminent person, having been chief justice of the King's 
Bench under Henry VI., was governor to the young Prince of 
"Wales during his retreat in France, and received at his hands 
the office of chancellor. It must never be forgotten that, in a 
treatise purposely composed for the instruction of one who 
hoped to reign over England, the limitations of government 
are enforced as strenuo\;sly by Fortescue as some succeeding 
lawyers have inculated the doctrines of arbitrary prerogative. 

" A king of England cannot at his pleasnre make any alterations in the 
laws of tlie land, for the nature of liis government is not only regal, but 
political. Had it been merely regal, he would have a power to make what 
innovations and alterations he pleased in the laws of the kingdom, impose 
tallages and other hardships upon the peo])le whether they would or no, 
without their consent, which sort of governuient the civil laws point out 
when they declare ' Quod principi placuit, legis liabet vigorem.' But it is 
much otherwise with a king whose government is political, because he can 
neither make any alteration or change in tlie laws of the realm without the 
consent of the subjects, nor burden them against their wills Avitli strange 
impositions; so that a people governed by such laws as are made by their 
own consent and approbation enjoy their properties securely and without the 
hazard of being dey)rived by them, either by the king or any otlier. The same 
things niay be effected under an absolute prince, provided he do not degenerate 
into the tyrant. Of such a princf^, Aristotle, in the tliird of liis ' Politics,' 
says, ' ll is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good 



510 FORTESCUE ON OUIl CONSTITUTION. Cn. VIII. Tx. III. 

laws.' But because it does not always happen that the i>erson presiding 
over a people is so qualified, St. Tlionias, in the hook "which he writ to the 
King of Cyprus, ' Do Regimine Principuui,' wishes that a kingdom could be 
so instituted as that the king might not be at liberty to tyrannize over his 
people; which only comes to pass in the present case: that is, when the 
sovereign jiower is restrained by jiolitical laws. Rejoice, therefore, my 
good prince, that such is the law of the kingdom which you are to inherit, 
because it will afford, both to yourself and subjects, the greatest security 
and satisfaction." -' 

The two great divisions of civil rule, the absolute, or regal 
as he calls it, and the political, Fortescue proceeds to deduce 
from the several originals of conquest and compact. Con- 
cerning the latter he declares emphatically a truth not always 
palatable to princes, that such governments Avere instituted by 
the people and for the people's good ; quoting St. Augustin 
for a similar definition of political society: 

" As the head of a body natural cannot change its nerves and sinews, can- 
not deny to the several parts their j)roper energy, their due projiortion and 
aliment of blood ; neither can a king, who is the head of a body politic, 
change the laws thereof, nor take from the jjeople what is theirs by right 
against their consent. Thus you have, sir, the formal institution of every 
political kingdom, from whence you may guess at the power which a king 
may exercise with respect to the laws and the subject. For he is appointed 
to protect liis subjects in their lives, properties, and laws: for this very end 
and purpose he has the delegation of power from the people, and he has no 
just claim to any other power but this. Wherefore, to give a brief answer 
to that question of yours, concerning the different powers which kings 
claim over their subjects, I am firmly of opinion that it arises solely from 
the different natures of tlieir original institution, as you may easily collect 
from what has been said. So tlie kingdom of England had its original 
from Brute, and tlie Trojans who attended him from Italy and Greece, 
and became a mixed kind of government, compounded of the regal and 
political.-** 

It would occupy too much space to quote every other pas- 
sage of the same nature in this treatise of Fortescue, and in 
that entitled, '* Of the Difference between an Absolute and 
Limited Monarchy," which, so far as these points are con- 
cerned, is nearly a translation from the former.^^ But these, 
corroborated as they are by the statute-book and by the rolls 
of Parliament, are surely conclusive against the notions which 
pervade JVIr. Hume's history. I have already remarked that 
a sense of the glaring prejudice by which some Whig A\'riters 
had been actuated, in representing the English constitution 

2' Fortescue, " De Laudibus Legum Aiijrlia?," c. 9. -^ Ibid. c. 13. 

^'•> Tlie latter treatise having been wril ten under Edward IV. — whom Fortescue 
as a restored Lancastrian, would be anxious not to otfend, and, whom, in fact, he 
took some pains to conciliate both in tliis iind other writings — it is evident that the 
principles of limited monarchy were as fully recognized in his reign, whatever 
paiticuhir acts of violence might occur, as they had been under the Lancastrian 
princes. 



English Const. ERRONEOUS VIEWS OF HUME. 511 

from the earliest times as nearly arrived at its present per- 
fection, conspired with certain prepossessions of his own to 
lead this eminent historian into an equally erroneous system 
on the opposite side. And as he traced the stream backward, 
and came last to the times of the Plantagenet dynasty, with 
opinions already biassed and even pledged to the world in his 
volumes of earlier publication, he was prone to seize hold of, 
and even exaggerate, every circumstance that indicated imma- 
ture civilization, and law perverted or infringed. To this his 
ignorance of English jurisprudence, which certainly in some 
measure disqualilied him from writing our history, did not a 
little contribute ; misrepresentations frequently occurring in 
his work which a moderate acquaintance with the law of the 
land would have prevented. 

It is an honorable circumstance to England that the history 
of no other country presents so few instances of illegal con- 
demnations upon political charges. The judicial torture was 
hardly known, and never recognized by law. The sentence in 
capital crimes, fixed unalterably by custom, allowed nothing 
to vindictiveness and indignation. There hardly occurs an 
example of any one being notoriously put to death without 
form of trial, except in moments«pf flagrant civil war. If the 
rights of juries were sometimes evaded by irregular jurisdic- 
tions, they were at least held sacred by the courts of law ; and 
through all the vicissitudes of civil liberty, no one ever ques- 
tioned the primary right of every freeman, handed down from 
his Saxon forefathers, to the trial by his "^leers. A just regard 
for public safety prescribes the necessity of severe penalties 
against rebellion and conspiracy ; but the interpretation of 
these offences, when intrusted to sovereigns and their coun- 
sellors, has been the most tremendous instrument of despotic 
power. In rude ages, even though a general spirit of political 
liberty may prevail, the legal character of treason will com- 
monly be undefined ; nor is it the disposition of lawyers to 
give greater accuracy to this part of criminal jurisprudence. 
The nature of treason appears to have been subject to much 
uncertainty in England before the statute of Edward III. If 
that memorable law did not give all possible precision to the 
offence, which we must certainly allow, it prevented at least 
those stretches of vindictive tyranny which disgrace the annals 
of other countries. The praise, however, miist be understood 
as comparative. Some cases of harsh if not illegal convictions 
could hardly fail to occur in times of violence and during 
changes of the reigning family. Perhaps the circumstances 



512 CAUSES TENDING TO FORM Chap. VIII. Part III. 

have noAv and then been aggravated by historians. Nothing 
couhl be more illegal than the conviction of the Earl of Cam- 
bridge and Lord Scrope in 1415, if it be true, according to 
Carte and Hume, that they were not heard in their defence. 
But whether this is to be absolutely inferred from the record 
is perhaps open to question. There seems at least to have 
been no sufficient motive for such an irregularity, their partici- 
pation in a treasonal)le conspiracy being manifest from their 
own confession. The proceedings against Sir John Mortimer 
in the 2d of Henry VI. are called by Hume highl3^ irreg- 
ular and illegal. They were, however, by act of attainder, 
which cannot well be styled illegal. Nor are they to be con- 
sidered as severe. Mortimer had broken out of the Tower, 
where he was confined on a charge of treason. This was a 
capital felony at common law ; and the chief irregularity seems 
to have consisted in having recourse to I'arliament in order to 
attaint him of treason, when he had already forfeited his life 
by another crime. 

§ 25. By what means the English acquired and preserved 
this political liberty, which, even in the fifteenth century, was 
the admiration of judicious foreigners,^" is a very rational and 
interesting inquiry. Their ©vn serious and steady attachment 
to the laws must always be reckoned among the principal 
causes of this blessing. The civil equality of all freemen 
below the rank of peerage, and the subjection of peers them- 
selves to the impartial arm of justice and to a due share in 
contribution to public burdens — advantages unknown to other 
countries — tended to identify the interests and to assimilate 
the feelings of the aristocracy with those of the people ; 
classes wliose dissension and jealousy have been in many in- 
stances the surest hope of sovereigns aiming at arbitrary power. 
This freedom from the "oppressive su])eri()rity of a privileged 
order was peculiar to England. In many kingdoms the royal 
prerogative was at least equally limited. The statutes of 
Aragon are more full of remedial provisions. The right of 
opposing a tyrannical government by arms was more frequently 
asserted in Castile. But nowhere else did the people possess 
by law, and I thiiik upon the whole, in effect, so much 
security for their personal freedom and property. Accordingly, 
the middling ranks flourished remarkably, not only in com- 
mercial towns, but among the cultivators of the soil. " There 
is scarce a small village," says Sir J. Fortescue, " in which you 

30 Philip (le Comines takes several opportunities of testifying his esteem for the 
English Government. See particularly in 1. iv., c. i., and 1. v., c. xix. 



English Const. . THE CON'S^ITUTIOlsr. 513 

may not tiiid a knight, au esquire, or some substantial house- 
holder (paterfamilias), commonly called a frankleyn,^^ pos- 
sessed of considerable estate ; besides others who are called 
freeholders, and many yeomen of estates sufficient to make a 
substantial jury." I would, however, point out more particu- 
larly two causes which had a very leading efficacy in the 
gradual development of our constitution : first, the schemes of 
Continental ambition in which our government was engaged; 
the manner in which feudal principles of insubordination and 
resistance were modified by the prerogatives of the early 
Norman kings. 

1. At the epoch when William the Conqueror ascended the 
throne, hardly any other power was possessed by the King of 
France than what he inherited from the great fiefs of the 
Capetian family. War with such a potentate was not exceed- 
ingly to be dreaded, and William, besides his immense revenue, 
could employ the feudal services of his vassals, which were 
extended by him to Continental expeditions. These circum- 
stances were not essentially changed till after the loss of 
Normandy ; for the acquisitions of Henry II. kept him fully 
on an equality with tlie French crown, and the dilapidation 
which had taken })lace in the royal demesne was compensated 
by several arbitrary resources that filled the exchequer of these 
monarchs. But in the reigns of John and Henry III., the 
position of England, or rather of its sovereign with respect to 
France, underwent a very disadvantageous change. The loss of 
Normandy severed the connection between the English nobility 
and the Continent ; they had no longer estates to defend, and 
took not sufficient interest in the concerns of Guienne to fight 
for that province at their own cost. Their feudal service was 
now commuted for an escnage, which fell very short of the 
expenses incurred in a protracted campaign. Tallages of royal 
towns and demesne lands, extortion of money from the Jews, 
every feudal abuse and oppression, were tried in vain to re- 
plenish the treasury, which the defence of Eleanor's inherit- 
ance against the increased energy of France was constantly 
exhausting. Even in the most arbitrary reigns a general tax 
upon land-holders, in any cases but those prescribed by tlie 

31 By a frankleyn in this place we are to understand what we call a country squire, 
like the frankleyn of Chaucer; for the word esquire in Fortescue's time vvas only 
used in its limited sense, for the sous of jieers and knights, or such as had obtaineil 
the title by creation or some other legal means. 

The mention of Chaucer leads me to add that the prologue to his " Canterbury 
Tales " is of itself a continual testimony to the plenteous and comfortable situation 
of tlie middle ranks in England, as well as to that fearless independence and frequent 
oriLriuality of character among them which libertj' and competence have conspired to 
produce. 



514 CAUSES TENDING TO F0R:SI Chap. VIII. Part III. 

feudal law, had not been ventured : and tlie standing bulwark 
of Magna Cliarta, as well as the feebleness and luipopidarity 
of Henry III., made it more dangerous to violate an estab- 
lished principle. Subsidies were therefore constantly required ; 
but for these it was necessary for the king to meet Parliament, 
to hear their complaints, and, if he could not elude, to ac- 
quiesce in their jietitions. These necessities came still more 
urgently upon Edward I., whose ambitious spirit could not 
patiently endure the encroachments of Pliilip the Fair, a rival 
not less ambitious, but certainly less distinguished by personal 
prowess, than himself. What advantage the friends of liberty 
rea})ed from this ardor for Continental warfare is strongly 
seen in the circumstances attending the Confirmation of the 
Charters. 

But after this statute had rendered all tallages without 
consent of Parliament illegal, though it did not for some time 
prevent their being occasionally imposed, it was still more 
difficult to carry on a war with France or Scotland, to keep 
on foot naval armaments, or even to preserve the courtly mag- 
nificence which that age of chivalry affected, without perpet- 
ual recurrence to the House of Commons. Edward III. very 
little consulted the interests of his prerogative when he 
stretched forth his hand to seize the phantom of a crown in 
France. It compelled him to assemble Parliament almost 
annually, and often to hold more than one session within the 
year. Here the representatives of England learned the habit 
of remonstrance and conditional supply ; and though, in the 
meridian of Edward's age and vigor, they often failed of im- 
mediate redress, yet they gradually swelled the statute-roll 
with provisions to secure their country's freedom ; and acquir- 
ing self-confidence by mutual intercourse and sense of the pub- 
lic opinion, they became aV)le, before the end of Edward's reign, 
and still more in that of his grandson, to control, prevent, and 
punish the abuses of administration. Of all these proud and 
sovereign privileges, the right of refusing supply was tiie key- 
stone. But for the long wars in which our kings were in- 
volved, at first by their possession of Guienne, and afterwards 
by their pretensions upon the crown of Fi'ance, it would have 
been easy to suppress remonstrances by avoiding to assemble 
Parliament. For it must be confessed that an authority was 
given to the king's proclamations, and to ordinances of the 
council, which differed but little from legislative power, and 
would very soon have been interpreted by complaisant courts 
of justice to give them the full extent of statutes. 



English Const. THE CONSTITUTION^. 515 

It is common, indeed, to assert that the liberties of England 
were bought with the blood of our forefathers. This is a very 
magnanimous boast, and in some degree is consonant enough 
to the truth. But it is far more generally accurate to say that 
they were purchased by money. A great proportion of our 
best laws, including Magna Charta itself, as it now stands con- 
firmed by Henry III., were, in the most literal sense, obtained 
by a pecuniary bargain with the crown. In many Parliaments 
of Edward III. and Richard II. this sale of redress is chaffered 
for as distinctly, and with as little apparent sense of disgrace, 
as the most legitimate business between two merchants would 
be transacted. So little was there of voluntary benevolence 
in what the loyal courtesy of our constitution styles conces- 
sions from the throne ; and so little title have these sovereigns, 
though we cannot refuse our admiration to the generous 
virtues of Edward III. and Henry V., to claim the gratitude 
of posterity as the benefactors of their people ! 

2. The relation established between a lord and his vassal by 
the feudal tenure, far from containing principles of any servile 
and implicit obedience, permitted the compact to be dissolved 
in case of its violation by either party. This extended as 
much to the sovereign as to inferior lords ; the authority of 
the former in France, where the system most flourished, being 
for several ages rather feudal than political. If a vassal were 
aggrieved, and if justice were denied him, he sent a defiance, 
that is, a renunciation of fealty, to the king, and was entitled 
to enforce redress at the point of his sword. It then became 
a contest of strength as between two independent potentates, 
and was terminated by treaty, advantageous or otherwise, ac- 
cording to the fortune of war. This privilege, suited enough 
to the situation of France, the great peers of which did not 
originally intend to admit more tlian a nominal su])remacy in 
the house of Capet, was evidently less compatible with the 
regular monarchy of England. The stern natures of William 
the Conqueror and his successors kept in control the mutinous 
spirit of their nobles, and reaped the profit of feudal tenures 
without submitting to their reciprocal obligations. They coun- 
teracted, if I may so say, the centrifugal force of that system 
by tlie application of a stronger power ; by preserving order, 
administering justice, checking the growth of baronial influ- 
ence and riches, with habitual activity, vigilance, and severity. 
Still, however, there remained the original principle that al- 
legiance depended conditionally upon good treatment, and that 
an appeal might be lawfully made to arms against an opj)res- 



516 INFLUENCE OF THE NOBILITY. Chap. VIII. Part IIL 

sive government. Nor was this, we may be sure, left for 
extreme necessity, or thought to requ.ire a long-enduring for- 
bearance. In modern times a king compelled by his subjects' 
swords to abandon any pretension would be supposed to have 
ceased to reign ; and the express recognition of such a right as 
that of insurrection has been justly deemed inconsistent with 
the majesty of law. But ruder ages had ruder sentiments. 
Force was necessary to repel force ; and men accustomed to 
see the king's authority defied by private riot were not much 
shocked when it was resisted in defence of public freedom. 

The Great Charter of John was secured by the election of 
twenty -live barons as conservators of the compact. If the 
king, or the justiciary in his absence, should transgress any 
article, any four might demand reparation, and on denial carry 
their com^daiut to the rest of their body. " And those barons, 
with all the commons of the land, shall distrain and annoy us 
by every means in their power, that is, by seizing our castles, 
lands, and possessions, and every other mode, till the wrong 
shall be repaired to their satisfaction ; saving our person, and 
our queen and children. And when it shall be repaired they 
shall obey us as before." It is amusing to see the common law 
of distress introduced upon tliis gigantic scale, and the capture 
of the king's castles treated as analogous to impounding a 
neighbor's horse for breaking fences. 

These feudal notions, which placed the moral obligation of 
allegiance very low, acting under a weighty pressure from the 
real strength of the crown, were favorable to constitutional 
liberty. The great vassals of France and Germany aimed at 
living independently on their tiefs, with no further concern for 
the r(^st than as useful allies having a common interest against 
the ci'own. But in England, as there was no prospect of 
throwing off subjection, the barons endeavored only to lighten 
its burden, fixing limits to prerogative by law, and securing 
their observation by parliamentary remonstrances or by dmt 
of arms. Hence, as all rebellions in England were directed 
only to coerce the government, or at the utmost to change the 
succession of the crown, without the smallest tendency to sep- 
aration, they did not impair the national strength nor destroy 
the character of the constitution. In all these contentions it 
is remarkable that the people and clergy sided with the nobles 
against the throne. No individuals are so popular with the 
monkish annalists, who si)eak the language of the populace, 
as Simon, earl of Leicester, Thomas, earl of Lancaster, and 
Thomas, duke of Gloucester — all turbulent opposers of the royal 



English Const. PREVALENCE OF RAPINE. 517 

authority, and probably little deserving of their panegyrics. 
Very few English historians of the Middle Ages are advocates 
of prerogative. This may be ascribed both to the equality of 
our laws and to the interest wliich the aristocracy found in 
courting popular favor, when committed against so formidable 
an adversary as the king. 

§ 26. From the time of Edward I. the feudal system and all 
the feelings connected with it declined very rapidly. But 
what the nobility lost in the number of their military tenants 
was m some degree compensated by the state of manners. 
The higher class of them, who took the chief share in public 
affairs, were exceedingly opulent; and their mode of life gave 
wealth an incredibly greater etRcacy than it possesses at pres- 
ent. Gentlemen of large estates and good families who had 
attached themselves to these great peers, who bore offices 
which we should call menial in their households, and sent 
their children thither for education, were of course ready to 
follow their banner in rising, without much inquiry into the 
cause. Still less would the vast body of tenants and their re- 
tainers, >vho were fed at the castle in time of peace, refuse to 
carry their pikes and staves into the field of battle. Many 
devices were used to preserve this aristocratic influence, which 
riches and ancestry of themselves rendered so formidable. 
Such was the maintenance of suits, or confederacies for the 
purpose of supporting each other's claims in litigation, which 
was the subject of frequent complaints in Parliament, and gave 
rise to several prohibitory statutes. By help of such confed- 
eracies parties were enabled to make violent entries upon the 
lands they claimed, which the law itself could hardly be said 
to discourage. Even proceedings in courts of justice were 
often liable to intimidation and influence. A practice much 
allied to confederacies of maintenance, though ostensibly more 
harmless, was that of giving liveries to all retainers of a noble 
family ; but it had an obvious tendency to preserve that spirit 
of factious attachments and animosities which it is the general 
policy of a wise government to dissipate. From the first year 
of Richard II. we And continual mention of this custom, with 
many legal provisions against it, but it was never abolished till 
the reign of Henry VII. 

§ 27. These associations under powerful chiefs were only in- 
cidentally beneficial as they tended to withstand the abuses of 
prerogative. In their more usual course they were designed 
to thwart the legitimate exercise of the king's government in 
the administration of the laws. All Europe was a scene of 



518 PREVALENT HABITS Chap. VIII. Part III. 

intestine anarchy during the Middle Ages ; and though Eng- 
land was far less exposed to the scourge of private war than 
most nations on the Continent, we should find, could we re- 
cover the local annals of every county, such an accumulation 
of petty rapine and tumult as would almost alienate us from 
the liberty which served to engender it. This was the com- 
mon tenor of manners, sometimes so much aggravated as to 
find a place in general history, more often attested by records 
during the three centuries that the house of Plantagenet sat 
on the throne. Disseizin, or forcible dispossession of free- 
holds, makes one of the most considerable articles in our law- 
books. Highway robbery was from the earliest times a sort 
of national crime. Capital punishments, though very fre- 
C[uent, made little impression on a bold and licentious crew, 
who had at least the sympathy of those who had nothing to 
lose on their side, and flattering prospects of impunity. We 
know how long the outlaws of Sherwood lived in tradition — 
men who, like some of their betters, have been permitted to 
redeem by a few acts of generosity the just ignominy of ex- 
tensive crimes. These, indeed, were the heroes of vulgar 
applause ; but when such a judge as Sir John Fortescue could 
exult that more Englishmen were hanged for robbery in one 
year than French in seven, and that, " if an Englishman be 
poor, and see another having riches which may be taken from 
him by might, he will pot spare to do so," it may be perceived 
how thoroughly these sentiments had pervaded the public 
mind. 

Such robbers, I have said, had flattering prospects of impu- 
nity. Besides the general want of communication, which 
made one who had fled from his own neighborhood tolerably 
secure, they had the advantage of extensive forests to facili- 
tate their depredations and prevent detection. When out- 
lawed or brought to trial, the worst offenders could frequently 
purchase charters of pardon, which defeated justice in the 
moment of her blow. Nor were the nobility ashamed to pat- 
ronize men guilty of every crime. Several proofs of this 
occur in the rolls. '^'^ 

32 A strange poHcv, for which no rafionnl cnnse can be alleged, kept Wales and 
even Cheshire ciistinct from the rest of tlie kinf,'iioi i. Nothing could be more injuri- 
ous to the adjacent counties. Upon the credit of tlieir immunity from the jurisdic- 
tion of the kintr's courts, the people of Clieshire broke with armed bands into the 
neighboring counties, and perpetr;ited all the crimes in their power. As to the 
Welsh frontier, it was constantly almost in a state of war, which a very little good 
sense and benevolence in any one of our sliepherds would have easily prevented, by 
admitting the conquered people to partake in equal privileges with their fellow-sub- 
jects. Instead of this, thev satisfied themselves with aggravating the mischief by 
granting legal reprisals upon Welshmen. Welshmen were absolutely excluded from 



English Const. OF RAPINE. 519 

It is perhaps the most meritorious part of Edward I.'s gov- 
ernment tliat he bent all his power to restrain these breaches 
of tranquillity. One of his salutary provisions is still in con- 
stant use — the statute of coroners. Another, more extensive, 
and, though partly obsolete, the foundation of modern laws, is 
the statute of Winton, which enacts that hue and cry shall be 
made upon the commission of a robbery, and that the hundred 
shall remain answerable for the damage unless the felons be 
brought to justice. It may be inferred from this provision 
that the ancient law of frank-pledge, though retained longer 
in forni, had lost its efficiency. By the same act, no stranger 
or suspicious person was to lodge even in the suburbs of towns ; 
the gates were to be kept locked from sunset to sunrising ; 
every host to be answerable for his guest ; tlie highways to be 
cleared of trees and underwood for two hundred feet on each 
side, and every man to keep arms, according to his sul)stance, 
in readiness to follow the sheriff on hue and cry raised after 
felons. The last provisi(m indicates that the robbers plun- 
dered the country in formidable bands. One of these, in a 
subsequent part of Edward's reign, burned the town of Boston 
during a fair, and obtained a vast booty, though their leader 
had the ill fortune not to escape the gallows. 

The preservation of order throughout the country was 
originally intrusted not only to the sheriff, coroner, and con- 
stables, but to certain magistrates called conservators of the 
peace. These, in conformity to the democratic character of 
our Saxon government, were elected by the freeholders in 
their County Court. But Edward I. issued commissions to 
carry into effect the statute of Winton ; and from the be- 
ginning of Edward III.'s reign the appointment of conserva- 
tors was vested in the crown, their authority gradually en- 
larged by a series of statutes, and their titles changed to that 
of justices. They were empowered to imprison and punish all 
rioters and other offenders, and such as they should find by 
indictment or suspicion to be reputed thieves or vagabonds, 
and to take sureties for good behavior from persons of evil 
fame. Such a jurisdiction was hardly more arbitrary than, in 
a free and civilized age, it has been thought fit to invest in 
magistrates ; but it was ill endured by a people who placed 
their notions of liberty in personal exemption from restraint 
rather than any political theory. An act having been passed 

bearing offices in Wales. The English living in the English towns of Wales earnestly 
petition (23 Henry VI., Rot. I'arl., vol. v., p. 104, 154) that this exclusion may be kept 
in force. Complaints of the disorderly state of the Welsh frontier are repeated as 
late as 12 Edward IV., vol. vi., p. 8. 



520 VILLENAGE OF Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

(2 Richard II., stat. 2, c. 6), in consequence of unusual riots 
and outrages, enabling magistrates to commit the ringleaders 
of tiimidtuary assemblies without waiting for legal process 
till the next arrival of justices of jail delivery, the Commons 
petitioned next year against this " horrible grievous ordi- 
nance," by which " every freeman in the kingdom would be 
in bondage to these justices," contrary to the great charter, 
and to many statutes, which forbid any man to be taken with- 
out due course of law. So sensitive was their jealousy of 
arbitrary imprisonment, that they preferred enduring riot and 
robbery to chastising them by any means that might afford a 
])recedent to oppression, or weaken men's reverence for Magna 
Charta. ' 

There are two subjects remaining to which this retrospect of 
the state of manners naturally leads us, and which I would 
not pass unnoticed, though not perhaps absolutely essential to 
a constitutional history ; because they tend in a very material 
degree to illustrate the progress of society, with which civil 
liberty and regular government are closely connected. These 
are, first, the servitude or villenage of the peasantry, and their 
gradual emancipation from that condition ; and, secondly, the 
continual increase of- commercial intercourse with foreign 
countries. But as the latter topic will fall more conveniently 
into the next part of this work, I shall postpone its considera- 
tion for the present. 

§ 28. In a former passage I have remarked of the Anglo- 
Saxon ceorls that neither their situation nor that of their de- 
scendants for the earlier reigns after the Conquest appears to 
have been mere servitude. But from the time of Henry II., 
as we learn from Glanvil, the villein, so called, was absolutely 
dependent upon his lord's will, compelled to unlimited services, 
and destitute of property, not only in the land he held for his 
maintenance, but in his own acquisitions. If a villein pur- 
chased or inherited land, the lord might seize it ; if he accumu- 
lated stock, its possession was equally precarious. Against 
his lord he had no right of action ; because his indemnity in 
damages, if he could have recovered any, might have been 
immediately taken away. If he fled from his lord's service, or 
from the land Avhich he held, a writ issued de nativitate ])ro- 
banda, and the master recovered his fugitive by law. His 
children was born to the same state of servitude ; and, con- 
trary to the rule of the civil law, where one parent "was free 
and the other in villenage, the offspring followed their father's 
condition. 



English Const. THE PEASANTKY. 521 

This was certainly a severe lot ; yet tliere are circumstances 
which materially distinguish it from slavery. The condition 
of villenage, at least in later times, was perfectly relative ; it 
formed no distinct order in the political economy. No man 
was a villein in the eye of law unless his master claimed him : 
to all others' he was a freeman, and might acquire, dispose of, 
or sue for property without impediment. 

This class was distinguished into villeins regardant^ who had 
been attached from time immemorial to a certain manor, and 
villeins in gross, where sucli territorial prescriptions had never 
existed, or had been broken. In the condition of these, what- 
ever has been said by some writers, I can find no manner of 
difference ; the distinction was merely technical, and affected 
only the mode of pleading. The term " in gross " is appro- 
priated in our legal language to ];)roperty held absolutely and 
without reference to any other. Thus it is applied to rights 
of advowson or of common when possessed simply and not as 
incident to any particular lands. And there can be no doubt 
that it was used in the same sense for the possession of a vil- 
lein. But there was a class of persons, sometimes inaccurately 
confounded with villeins, whom it is more important to separate. 
Villenage had a double sense, as it related to persons or to 
lands. As all men were free or villeins, so all lands were 
held by a free or villein tenure. As a villein might be en- 
feoffed of freeholds, though they lay at the mercy of his lord, 
so a freeman might hold tenements in villenage. In this case 
his ])ersonal liberty subsisted along with the burdens of terri- 
torial servitude. He was bound to arbitrary service at the 
will of the lord, and he might" by the same will be at any 
moment dispossessed ; for such was the condition of his ten- 
ure. But his chattels were secure from seizure, his person 
from injury, and he might leave the land whenever he 
pleased. 

From so disadvantageous a condition as this of villenage it 
may cause some surprise that the peasantry of England 
shoidd have ever emerged. The law incapacitating a villein 
from acquiring property placed, one would imagine, an insur- 
mountable barrier in the way of his enfranchisement. It 
followed from thence, and is positively said by Glanvil, that a 
villein could not buy his freedom, because the price he ten- 
dered would already belong to his lord. And even in the case 
of free tenants in villenage it is not easy to comprehend how 
their uncertain and unbounded services could ever pass into 
slight pecuniary commutations; much less how they could 



522 VILLENAGE OF PEASANTRY. Chap. VIII. Paiit III. 

come to maintain themselves in their hxncls, and mock the 
lord with a nominal tenure according to the custom of the 
manor. 

This, like many others relating to the progress of society, 
is a very obscure inquiry ; but the following observations may 
tend a little to illustrate our immediate subject, the gradual 
extinction of villenage. 

The services of villenage were gradually rendered less on- 
erous and uncertain. Lords of generous tempers granted in- 
dulgences which were either intended to be or readily became 
perpetual. And thus, in the time of Edward I., we find the 
tenants in some manors bound only to stated services, as 
recorded in the lord's book. Some of these, perhaps, might 
be villeins by blood ; but free tenants in villenage were still 
more likely to obtain this precision in their services ; and, 
from claiming a customary right to be entered in the court- 
roll upon the same terms as their predecessors, prevailed at 
length to get copies of it, for their security. Proofs of this 
remarkable transformation from tenants in villenage to copy- 
holders are found in the reign of Heury III. ; and in that of 
Edward IV. the judges permitted the copy-holder to bring his 
action of trespass against the lord for dispossession. 

While some of the more fortunate villeins crept up into 
property as well as freedom under the name of copy-holders, 
the greater part enfranchised themselves in a different man- 
ner. The law which treated them so harshly did not take 
away the means of escape ; nor was this a matter of difficulty 
in such a country as England, To this, indeed, the unequal 
progression of agriculture and' population in different counties 
would have naturally contributed. Men emigrated, as they 
always must, in search of cheapness or employment, accord- 
ing to the tide of human necessities. But the villein, who had 
no additional motive to urge his steps away from his native 
|)lace, might well hope to be forgotten or undiscovered when 
he breathed a freer air, and engaged his voluntary labor to a 
distant master. The lord had indeed an action against him ; 
but there was so little communication between remote parts 
of the country that it might be deemed his fault, or singular 
ill-fortune, if he were compelled to defend himself. Even in 
that case the laAV inclined to favor him ; and so many obstacles 
were thi'own in the way of these suits to reclaim fugitive 
villeins, that they could not have operated materially to retard 
their general enfranchisement. In one case, indeed — tliat of 
unmolested residence for a year and a day within a walled 



English Const. liEGULATlON OF WAGES. 523 

city or borough — the villein became free, and the lord was 
absolutely barred of his remedy. This provision is contained 
even in the laws of "William the Conqueror, as contained in 
Hoveden, and, if it be not an interpolation, may be supposed 
to have had a view to strengthen the j^upulatioii of those 
places which were designed for garrisons. This law, whether 
of William or not, is unequivocally mentioned by Glanvil. 

By such means, a large proportion of the peasantry before 
the middle of the fourteenth century had become hired la- 
borers instead of villeins. We first hear of them on a grand 
scale in an ordinance made by Edward III. in the twenty- 
third year of his reign. This was just after the dreadful 
pestilence of 1348, and it recites that, the number of work- 
men and servants having been greatly reduced by that ca- 
lamity, the remainder demanded excessive wages from their 
employers. Such an enhancement in the price of labor, 
though founded exactly on the same principles as regulate 
the value of any other commodity, is too frequently treated 
as a sort of crime by lawgivers, who seem to grudge the poor 
that transient melioration of their lot which the progress of 
population, or other analogous circumstances, will, without any 
interference, very rapidly take away. This ordinance, there- 
fore, enacts that every man in England of whatever condition, 
bond or free, of able body, and within sixty years of age, not 
living of his own, nor by any trade, shall be obliged, when 
required, to serve any master who is willing to hire him at 
such wages as were usually paid three years since, or for some 
time preceding ; provided that the lords of villeins or tenants 
in villenage shall have the preference of their labor, so that 
they retain no more than shall be necessary for them. IVIore 
than these old wages is strictly forbidden to be offered, as well 
as demanded. No one is permitted, under color of charity, 
to give alms to a beggar. And, to make some compensation to 
the inferior classes for these severities, a clause is inserted, as 
wise, just, and practicable as the rest, for the sale of provis- 
ions at reasonable prices. 

§ 29. This ordinance met with so little regard that a statute 
was made in Parliament two years after, fixing the wages of 
all artificers and husbandmen with regard to the nature and 
season of their labor. From this time it became a frequent 
complaint of the Commons that the statute of laborers was not 
kept. The king had in this case, probably, no other reason 
for leaving their grievance uiiredressed than his inability to 
change the order of Providence. A silent alteration had been 



'524 POPULAR OUTBREAKS. Chap. VIII. Part III. 

wrought in the condition and character of the lower classes 
during the reign of Edward III. This was the effect of in- 
creased knowledge and refinement, which had been making 
a considerable progress for full half a century, though they 
did not readily permeate the cold region of poverty and 
ignorance. It was natural that the country people, or up- 
landish folk, as they were called, should re})ine at the exclu- 
sion from that enjoyment of competence and security for the 
fruits of their labor which the inhabitants of towns so fully 
possessed. The fourteenth century was, in many parts of 
Europe, tlie age when a sense of political servitude was most 
keenly felt. Thus the insurrection of the Jacquerie in France, 
about the year looS, had the same character, and resulted in 
a great measure from the same causes, as that of the English 
l^easants in 1382. And we may account in a similar manner 
for the democratical tone of the French and Flemish cities, 
and for the prevalence of a spirit of liberty in Germany and 
Switzerland.^" 

I do not know whether we should attribute part of this 
revolutionary concussion to the preaching of Wicliff's disci- 
ples, or look upon both one and the other as phenomena be- 
longing to that particular epoch in the j^rogress of society. 
New principles, both as to civil rule and religion, broke sud- 
denly upon the uneducated mind, to render it bold, presump- 
tuous, and turbulent. But at least I make little doubt that 
the dislike of ecclesiastical power, which spread so rapidly 
among the people at this season, connected itself with a spirit 
of insubordination and an intolerance of political subjection. 
])Oth Avere nourished by the same teachers, the lower secular 
clergy ; and -however distinct we may think a religious refor- 
mation from a civil anarchy, there was a good deal common 
in the language by which the populace were inflamed to either 
one or the other. Even the scriptural moralities Avhich were 
then exhibited, and Avhich became the foundation of our 
theatre, afforded fuel to the spirit of sedition. The common 
original and common destination of mankind, Avith every other 
lesson of equality which religion supplies to humble or to 
console, Avere displayed with coarse and glaring features in 
these representations. The familiarity of such ideas has 
deadened their effects upon our minds ; but Avhen a rude 
peasant, surprisingly destitute of religious instruction during 
that corrupt age of the Church, was led at once to these 
impressive truths, Ave cannot be astonished at tlie intoxication 
of mind they produced. 

33 Note II. " Popular Poetry." 



English Const. MANUMISSION OF VILLEINS. 525 

The storm that almost swept away all bulwarks of civilized 
and regular society seems to have been long in collecting 
itself. Perhaps a more sagacious legislature might have 
contrived to disperse it ; but the Commons only presented 
complaints of the refractoriness with which villeins and 
tenants in villenage rendered their due services ; and the 
exigencies of government led to the fatal poll-tax of a groat, 
which was the proximate cause of the insurrection. By the 
demands of these rioters we perceive that territorial servitude 
was far from extinct ; but it should not be hastily concluded 
that they were all personal villeins, for a large proportion 
were Kentishmen, to whom that condition could not have 
applied ; it being a good bar to a writ de nativitate probanda 
that the party's father was born in the county of Kent. 

After this tremendous rebellion it might be expected that 
the legislature Avould use little indulgence towards the lower 
commons. Such unhappy tumults are doubly mischievous, 
not more from the immediate calamities that attend them 
than from the fear and hatred of the people which they gen- 
erate in the elevated classes. The general charter of manu- 
mission extorted from the king by the rioters of Blackheath 
was annulled by proclamation to the sheriffs, and this revo- 
cation approved by the Lords and Commons in Parliament ; 
who added, as was very true, that such enfranchisement could 
not be made Avithout their consent ; " which they would never 
give to save themselves from perishing all together in one 
day." Eiots were turned into treason by a law of the same 
Parliament. By a very harsh statute in the 12th of Richard 
II. no servant or laborer could depart, even at the expiration 
of his service, from the hundred in which he lived without per- 
mission under the king's seal ; nor might any who had been bred 
to husbandry till twelve years old exercise any other calling. 
A few years afterwards the Commons petitioned that villeins 
might not put their children to school in order to advance 
them by the Church ; " and this foi' the honor of all the freemen 
of the kingdom." In the same Parliament they complained 
that villeins fly to cities and boroughs, whence their masters 
cannot recover them, and, if they attempt it, are hindered by 
the people ; and prayed that the Lords might seize their vil- 
leins in such places without regard to the franchises thereof. 
But on both these petitions the king put in a negative. 

From henceforward we find little notice taken of villenage 
in Parliamentary records, and there seems to have been a 
rapid tendency to its entire abolition. 



626 EEIGN OF llENliY VI. Chap. VIII. Takt III. 

§ 30. I cannot presume to conjecture in what degree vol- 
untary manumission is to be reckoned among the means that 
contributed to the abolition of villenage. Charters of enfran- 
chisement were very common upon the Continent. They may 
j)erhaps have been less so in England. Instances, however, 
occur from time to time, and we cannot expect to discover 
many. One appears as early as the fifteenth year of Henry 
III., who grants to all persons born or to be born within his 
village of Contishall, tliat they shall be free from all villenage 
in body and blood, paying an aid of twenty shillings to knight 
tlie king's eldest son, and six shillings a year as a quitrent. 
So in the twelfth of Edward III. certain of the king's villeins 
are enfranchised on payment of a fine. In strictness of law, 
a fine from the villein for the sake of enfranchisement was 
nugatory, since all he could possess was already at his lord's 
disposal. But custom and equity might easily introduce dif- 
ferent maxims ; and it Avas plainly for tlie lord's interest to en- 
courage his tenants in the acquisition of money to redeem 
themselves, ratiier than to quench the exertions of their indus- 
try by availing himself of an extreme right. Deeds of enfran- 
chisement occur in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth; and 
perhaps a commission of tlie latter princess in 1574, directing 
the enfrancldsement of her bondmen and bondwomen on 
certain manors upon payment of a fine, is the last unequivocal 
testimony to the existence of villenage ; though it is highly 
probable that it existed in remote parts of the country some 
time longer. 

§ 31. From this general view of the English constitution, 
as it stood about the time of Henry VI., we must turn our 
eyes to tlie political revolutions which clouded the latter years 
of his reign. The minority of this prince, notwithstanding 
the vices and dissensions of his court and the inglorious dis- 
comfiture of our arms in France, was not perhaps a calamitous 
period. The country grew more wealthy ; the law was, on the 
whole, better observed ; the power of Parliament more com])lete 
and effectual than in preceding times. But Henry's weakness 
of understanding becoming evident as he reached manhood, 
rendered his reign a perpetual minority. His marriage with 
a princess of strong mind, but ambitious and vindictive, rather 
tended to weaken the government and to accelerate his down- 
fall — a certain reverence tliat had been paid to the gentleness 
of the king's disposition being overcome by her unpopularity. 
By degrees Henry's natural feebleness degenerated almost into 
fatuity ; and this unhappy condition seems to have overtaken 



English Const. HISTORICAL INSTANCES. 527 

liim nearly about the time when it became an ardnons task to 
withstand the assult in preparation against his government. 
This may properly introduce a great constitutional subject, to 
which some peculiar circumstances in the reign of George III. 
imperiously directed the consideration of Parliament. Though 
the proceedings of 1788 and 1810 are undoubtedly precedents 
of far more authority than any that can be derived from our 
ancient history, yet, as the seal of the legislature has not yet 
been set upon this controversy, it is not perhaps altogether 
beyond the possibility of future discu^ion ; and at least it can- 
not be uninteresting to look back on those parallel or analo- 
gous cases by which the deliberations of Parliament upon the 
question of regency were guided. 

§ 32. While the kings of England retained their Continental 
dominions, and were engaged in the wars to which those gave 
birth, they were of course frequently absent from this country. 
Upon such occasions the. administration seems at first to have 
devolved officially on the justiciary, as chief servant of the 
crown. But Henry III. began the practice of appointing 
lieutenants, or guardians of the realm (custodes regni), as they 
were more usually termed, by way of temporary substitutes. 
They were usually nominated by the king without consent of 
I^arliament ; and their office carried with it the right of exer- 
cising all the prerogatives of the crown. The most remarkable 
circumstance attending those lieutenancies was that they were 
sometimes conferred on the heir-apparent during his infancy. 
The Black Prince, then duke of Cornwall, was left guardian of 
the realm in 1339, when he was but ten years old ; and Rich- 
ard his son, when still younger, in 1372, during Edward III.'s 
last expedition into Prance. 

These do not, however, bear a very close analogy to re- 
gencies in the stricter sense, or substitutions during the 
natural incapacity of the sovereign. Of such there had been 
several instances before it became necessary to supply the de- 
ficiency arising from Henry's derangement. 1. At the death 
of John, William, earl of Pembroke, assumed the title of rec- 
tor regis et regni, with the consent of the royal barons who 
had just proclaimed the young king, and probably conducted 
the government in a great measure by their advice. But the 
circumstances were too critical, and the time is too remote, to 
give this precedent any material weight. 2. Edward I. being 
in Sicily at his father's death, the nobility met at the Temple 
Church, as we are informed by a contemporary writer, and, 
after making a new great seal, appointed the Archbisliop of 



528 HISTORICAL INSTANCES Chap. VIII. Part III. 

York, Edward, earl of Cornwall, and the Earl of Gloucester, to 
be ministers and guardians of the realm ; who accordingly con- 
ducted the administration in the king's name until his return.^* 
It is here observable that the Earl of Cornwall, though nearest 
prince of the blood, was not supposed to enjoy any superior 
title to the regency, wherein he was associated witli two other 
persons. But while the crown itself was hardly acknowledged 
to be unquestionably hereditary, it would be strange if any 
notion of such a right to the regency had been entertained. 
3. At the accession of Edward III., then fourteen years old, 
the Parliament, which was immediately summoned, nominated 
four bishops, four earls, and six barons as a standing council, 
at the head of which the Earl of Lancaster seems to have been 
placed, to advise the king in all business of government. It 
was an article in the charge of treason, or, as it was then 
styled, of accroaching royal power, against Mortimer, that he 
intermeddled in the king's household without the assent of his 
council. '-They may be deemed, tlierefore, a sort of Parlia- 
mentary regency, though the duration of their functions does 
not seem to be defined. 4. The proceedings at the commence- 
ment of the next reign are more worthy of attention. Edward 
III. dying June 31, 1377, the keepers of the great seal next 
day, in absence of the chancellor beyond sea, gave it into the 
young king's hands before his council. He immediately de- 
livered it to the Duke of Lancaster, and the duke to Sir 
Nicholas Bode, for safe custody. Eour days afterward the 
king in council delivered the seal to the Bishop of St. David's, 
who affixed it in the same day to divers letters patent, llichard 
was at this time ten years and six months old ; an age certainly 
very unfit for the personal execution of sovereign authority. 
Yet he was supposed cajiable of reigning witliout the aid of a 
regency. This miglit be in virtue of a sort of magic ascribed 
by lawyers to the great seal, the possession of which bars all 
furtlier intpury, and renders any government legal. The 
ju-actice of modern times requiring the constant exercise of the 
sign-manual has made a public confession of incapacity neces- 
sary in many cases where it might have been concealed or 
overlooked in earlier periods of the constitution. But though 
no one was invested with the office of regent, a council of 
twelve was named by the prelates and peers at the king's 
coronation, July 16, 1377, without whose concurrence no 
public measure was to be carried into effect. I have men- 
tioned in another place the modifications introduced from time 

S"" Matt. Westmonast. :ip Brady's History of England, vol. ii., p. 1. 



English Const. OF REGENCIES. 529 

to time l)y Parliament, Avliich might itself be deemed a great 
council of regency during the first years of Richard. (See 
p. 459.) 5. The next instance is at the accession of Henry 
VI. This prince was but nine months old at his father's 
death; and whether from a more evident incapacity for the 
conduct of government in his case than in that of Richard II., 
or from the progress of constitutional principles in the forty 
years elapsed since the latter's accession, far more regularity 
and deliberation were shown in supplying the defect in the ex- 
ecutive authority. Upon the news arriving that Henry V. 
was dead, several lords spiritual and temporal assembled, on 
account of the imminent necessity, in order to preserve peace, 
and provide for the exercise of offices appertaining to the king. 
These peers accordingly issued commissions to judges, sheriffs, 
escheators, and others, for various purposes, and writs for a 
new Parliament. This was opened by commission under the 
great seal directed to the Duke of Gloucester, in the usual 
form, and with the king's teste. Some ordinances were made 
in this Parliament by the Duke of Gloucester as commissioner, 
and some in the king's name. The acts of the peers who had 
taken on themselves the administration, and summoned Par- 
liament, were confirmed. On the twenty-seventh day of its 
session, it is entered upon the roll that the king, " considering 
his tender age, and inability to direct in person the concerns 
of his realm, by assent of Lords and Commons, appoints the 
Duke of Bedford, or, in his absence beyond sea, the Duke of 
Gloucester, to be protector and defender of the kingdom and 
English Church, and the king's chief counsellor." Letters 
patent were made out to this effect, the appointment being, 
however, expressly during the king's pleasure. Sixteen coun- 
cillors were named in Parliament to assist the protector in his 
administration; and their concurrence was made necessary to 
the removal and a|)pointment of officers, except some inferior 
patronage specifically reserved to the protector. This arrange- 
ment was in contravention of the late king's testament, which 
had conferred the regency on the Duke of Gloucester, in ex- 
clusion of his elder brother. But the nature and spirit of 
these proceedings will be better understood by a remarkable 
passage in a roll of a later Parliament ; where the House of 
Lords, in answer to a request of Gloucester that he might 
know what authority he possessed as protector, remind him 
that in the first Parliament of the king — 

" Ye desired to have li ad ye governaunce of yis land; affermyng yat hit 
hclonged unto you of rygzt, as well by ye niene of your birth as by ye lasts 



530 HISTORICAL REGENCIES. Chap. VIII. Part III. 

wylle of ye kyng yat was your broyer, whome God assoile; alleggyng for 
you such grouodes and moty ves as it was yought to your discretion made for 
your intent; wliereupon, the hirds spiritual and temjioral assembled there in 
Parliament, among which were there my lordes your uncles, the Bishop of 
Winchester that now liveth, and the Duke of Exeter, and your cousin the 
Earl of March that be gone to (Jod, and ol Warwick, and other in great 
number that now live, had great and long deliberation and advice, searched 
precedents of the governail of the land in time and case semblable, when 
kings of this land have been tender of age, took also information of the 
laws of the land, of such persons as be notably learned therein, and llnally 
found your said desire not caused nor grounded in precedent, nor in the law 
of the land; the which the king that dead is, in his life nor might by his last 
will nor otherwise altre, change, nor abroge, without the assent of the three 
estates, nor commit or grant to any person governance or rule of this land 
longer than lie lived; but on that other behalf, the said lords found your 
said desire not according with the laws of this land, and against the right 
and fredome of the estates of the same land. Howe were it that it be not 
thought that any such thing wittingly proceeded of your intent; and never- 
theless to keep peace and tranquillity, and to the intent to ease and appease 
you, it was advised and appointed by authority of the king, assenting the 
three estates of this land, that ye, in absence of my lord your brother of Bed- 
ford, should be chief of the king's council, and devised unto you a name dif- 
ferent from other counsellors, not the name of tutor, lieutenant, governor, 
nor of regent, nor no name that should import authority of governance of 
the land, but the name of protector and defensor, which Imiiorteth a personal 
duty of attendance to the actual defense of the land, as well against enemies 
outward, if case required, as against rebels inward, if any were, that God 
forbid; granting you therewith certain power, the which is specified and 
contained in an act of the said Parliament, to endure as long as it liked the 
king. In the which, if the intent of the said estates had been that ye more 
power and authority should have had, more should have been expressed 
therein: to the which appointment, ordinance, and act, ye then agreed you 
as for your person, making nevertlieless protestation that it was not your 
intent in any wise to deroge or do prejudice unto my lord your brother of 
Bedford by your said agreement, as toward any right that he would pretend 
or claim in the governance of this land; and as toward any pre-eminence that 
you might have or belong unto you as chief of council, it is jtlainly declared 
in the said act and articles, subscribed by my said lord of Bedford, by your- 
self and the other lords of the council. But as in I'arliament to which ye 
be called upon your faith and ligeance as Duke of Glocester, as other lords 
be, and not otherwise, wo know no power nor authority that ye have, other 
than ye as Duke of Glocester should have, the king being hi rarliament, at 
years of most discretion: "We marvailing with all our hearts that, consider- 
ing the open declaration of the authority and power lielonging to my lord 
of Bedford and to you in his absence, and also to the king's council sub- 
scribed purely and simply by my said lord of Bedford and by you, that you 
should in any wise be stirred or moved not to content you therewith or to 
pretend you any other: Namely, considering that the king, blessed be our 
lord, is, sith the lime of the said power granted unto you, far gone and grown 
in person, in wit, and understanding, and like with the grace of God to occupy 
his own royal {)ower within few years; and forasmuch considering the things 
and causes .abovesaid, and other many that long were to write, We lords 
aforesaid pray, exhort, and reqitire you to content you with the power above- 
said and declared, of the which my lord your brother of Bedford, the king's 
eldest tmcle, contented him : and that ye none larger power desire, will, nor 
use: giving you this that is aboven written for our answer to your foresaid 
demand, the which we will dwell and abide with, witliouten variance or 
changing. Over this beseeching and praying you in our most humble and 
lowly wise, and also requiring you in the king's name, that ye, according to 
the king's commandment, contained in his writ sent unto you in that behalf, 
come to this his present Parliament, and intend to the good effect and speed 



English Const. DUKE OP YORK PROTECTOR. 531 

of matters to be cleinosned and treted in the same, like as of riglit ye owe to 
do." — Hot. Pari., 6 Henry VI., vol. iv., p. o2G. 

It is evident tliat this plain, or rather rude, address to the 
Duke of Gloucester was dictated by the prevalence of Car- 
dinal Beaufort's party in council and Parliament. But the 
transactions in the former Parliament are not unfairly repre- 
sented ; and, comparing them with the passage extracted 
above, we may perhaps be 'entitled to infer : 1. That the king 
does not possess any constitutional prerogative of appointing 
a regent during the minority of his successor ; and 2. That 
neither the heir presumptive, nor any other person, is entitled 
to exercise the royal prerogative during the king's infancy (or, 
by parity of reasoning, his infirmity), nor to any title that 
conveys them ; the sole right of determining the persons by 
whom, and fixing the limitations under which, the executive 
government shall be conducted in the king's name and behalf, 
devolving upon the great council of Parliament. 

In two years the party hostile to Gloucester's influence 
had gained ground enough to abrogate his office of pro- 
tector, leaving only the honorary title of chief counsellor. 
For this the king's coronation, at eight years of age, was 
thought a fair pretence. The government was conducted as 
before by a selfish and disunited council ; but the king's name 
was sufticient to legalize their measures, nor does any objec- 
tion appear to have been made in Parliament to such a mockery 
of the name of monarchy. In the year 1454, the thirty-second 
of Henry's reign, his unhappy malady, transmitted perhaps 
from his maternal grandfather, assumed so decided a character 
of derangement or imbecility, that Parliament could no longer 
conceal from itself the necessity of a more efficient ruler. An 
act was passed accordingly, constituting the Duke of York pro- 
tector of the Church and kingdom, and chief counsellor of the 
king, during the latter's pleasure ; or until the Prince of Wales 
should attain years of discretion, on whom the said dignity 
was immediately to devolve. 

It may be conjectured by the provision made in favor of the 
Prince of Wales, then only two years old, that the king's con- 
dition was supposed to be beyond hope of restoration. But in 
about nine months he recovered sufficient speech and recollec- 
tion to supersede the Duke of York's protectorate. The suc- 
ceeding transactions are matter of familiar, though not, perhaps, 
very perspicuous history. The king was a prisoner in his 
enemies' hands after the affair at St. Albans, when Parliament 
met, in July, 1455. In this session little was done except 



532 YORK'S CLAIM TO THE CROWN. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

I'enewing tlie strongest oaths of allegiance to Henry and liis 
family. But tlie two houses meeting again after a prorogation 
to November 12, during which time the Duke of York had 
strengthened his party, he was reappointed to his charge of 
protector. It is worthy of notice that in this transaction the 
House of Peers assumed an exclusive right of choosing the pro- 
tector, though, in the act passed to ratify their election, the 
Commons' assent, as a matter of course, is introduced. The last 
year's precedent was followed in the present instance, except- 
ing a remarkable deviation ; instead of the words " during 
the king's pleasure," the duke was to hold his office "until 
he should be discharged of it by the Lords in Parliament." 

This extraordinary clause, and the slight allegations on 
which it was thought fit to substitute a vicegerent for the 
reigning monarch, are sufficient to prove, even if the common 
historians were silent, that whatever passed as to this second 
protectorate of the Duke of York was altogether of a revolu- 
tionary com])lexion. In the actual circumstances of civil blood 
already spilled, and the king in captivity, we may justly won- 
der that so much regard was shown to the regular forms and 
precedents of the constitution. But the duke's natural modera- 
tion will account for part of this, and the temper of the Lords 
for much more. That assenibly ai)pears for the most part to 
have been faithfully attached to the house of Lancaster. The 
partisans of Richard were found in the Commons and among 
the populace. Several months elapsed after the victory of St. 
Albans before an attempt was thus made to set aside a sov- 
ereign, not laboring, so far as we know, under any more notori- 
ous infirmity than before. It then originated in the Commons, 
and seems to have received but an uuAvilling consent from the 
upper house. Even in constituting the Duke of York pro- 
tector over the head of Henry, whom all men despaired of ever 
seeing in a state to face the dangers of s\\q\\ a season, the 
liOrds did not forget the rights of his son. By this latter 
instrument, as well as by that of the preceding year, the 
duke's office was to cease upon the Prince of Wales arriving at 
the age of discretion. 

§ 33. But what had long been proitagated in secret soon 
became familiar to the public ear — that the Duke of York 
laid claim to the throne. He was unquestionably heir general 
of the royal line, through his mother, Anne, daughter of Roger 
Mortimer, earl of March, son of Phili])|)a, daughter of Lionel, 
duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III. Roger Mortimer's 
eldest son, Edmund, had been declared heir presumptive by 



English Const. YORK'S CLAIM TO THE CROWN. 533 

Richard II.; but his infancy during tlie revolution that placed 
Henry IV. on the throne had caused his pretensions to be 
passed over in silence. The new king, however, was induced, 
by a jealousy natural to his situation, to detain the Earl of 
March in custody. Henry V. restored his liberty ; and, though 
he had certainly connived for a while at the conspiracy planned 
by his brother-in-law, the Earl of Cambridge, and Lord Scrope 
of Masham, to place the crown on his head, that magnanimous 
prince gave him a free pardon, and never testilied any dis- 
pleasure. The present Duke of York was honored by Henry 
VI. with the highest trusts iu France and Ireland, such as 
Beaufort and Gloucester could never have dreamed of confer- 
ring on him if his title to the crown had not been reckoned 
obsolete. It has been very pertinently remarked that the 
crime perpetrated by Margaret and her counsellors in tlie death 
of the Duke of Gloucester was the destruction of the house 
of Lancaster. Erom this time the Duke of York, next heir 
in presumption while the king was childless, might inno- 
cently contemplate the pros])ect of royalty ; and when such 
ideas had long been ]3assing through his mind, we may judge 
how reluctantly the birth of Prince Edward, nine years after 
Henry's marriage, would be admitted to disturb them. The 
queen's administration unpopular, careless of national interests, 
and partial to his inveterate enemy, the Duke of Somerset ; the 
king incapable of exciting fear or respect, himself conscious 
of powerful alliances and universal favor — all these circum- 
stances combined could hardly fail to nourish those opinions 
of hereditary right which he must have imbibed from his 
infancy. 

The Duke of York preserved through the critical season 
of rebellion such moderation and humanity that we may par- 
don him that bias in favor of his own pretensions to which 
he became himself a victim. Margaret, perhaps, by her san- 
guinary violence in the Coventry Parliament of 14()(), where 
the duke and all his adherents were attainted, left him not the 
choice of remaining a subject with impunity. P)ut with us, 
who are to weigh these ancient factions in the balance of 
wisdom and justice, there should be no hesitation in decid- 
ing that the house of Lancaster were lawful sovereigns of 
England. I am, indeed, astonished that not only such histo- 
rians as Carte, who wrote undisguisedly upon a Jacobite sys- 
tem, but even men of juster principles, have been inadvertent 
enough to mention the right of the house of York. If the 
original consent of the nation, if three descents of the crown, 



534 WAR OF THE ROSES. Chap. VIII. PaetIII. 

if repeated acts of Parliament, if oaths of allegiance from tlie 
whole kingdom, and more particularly from those who now 
advanced a contrary pretension, if undisturbed, u.nquestioned 
possession during sixty years, could not secure the reigning 
family against a mere defect in their genealogy, when were 
the people to expect tranquillity ? Xo prejudice has less in 
its favor, and none has been more fatal to the peace of man- 
kind, than that which regards a nation of subjects as a 
family's private inheritance. The law of England has been 
held to annex the subject's fidelity to the reigning monarch, 
by whatever title he may have ascended the throne, and 
whoever else may be its claimant.^^ But the statute of the 
eleventh of Henry VII., c. 1, has furnished an uneqiuvocal 
commentary upon this principle, when, alluding to the con- 
demnations and forfeitures by which those alternate successes 
of the white and red roses had almost exhausted the noble 
blood of England, it enacts that " no man for doing true and 
faithful service to the king for the time being be convict or 
attaint of high treason, nor of other offences, by act of Par- 
liament or otherwise." 

Though all classes of men and all parts of England were 
divided into factions by this unhappy contest, yet the strength 
of the Yorkists lay in London and the neighboring counties, 
and generally among the middling and lower people. And 
this is what might naturally be expected. For notions of 
hereditary right take easy hold of the populace, who feel an 
honest sympathy for those whom they consider as injured; 
while men of noble birth and high station have a keener 
sense of personal duty to their sovereign, and of the baseness 
of deserting their allegiance. Notwithstanding the wide- 
spreading influence of the Nevils, most of the nobility were 
well affected to the reigning dynasty. They acquiesced re- 
luctantly in the second protectorate of the Duke of York after 
the battle of St. Albans. Thirty-two temporal peers took 
an oath of fealty to Henry and his issue in the Coventry Par- 
liament of 14G(), which attainted the Duke of York and the 
earls of Warwick and Salisbury. And in the memorable 
circumstances of the duke's claim personally made in Parlia- 
ment, it seems manifest that the Lords complied not only 
Avith hesitation but unwillingness, and iu fact testified their 
respect and duty for Henry by confirming the crown to him 
during his life. The rose of Lancaster blushed upon the ban- 
ners of the Staffords, the Percies, the Veres, the Hollands, and 

"5 Hale's Pleas of the Crown, vol. i., pp. 01, 101 (edit. 17.36). 



English Const. EDWAUD IV. 535 

the Courtneys. All these illustrious families lay crushed for 
a time under the ruins of their party. But the course of for- 
tune, which has too great a mastery over crowns and sceptres 
to be controlled by men's affection, invested Edward IV. with 
a possession which the general consent of the nation both 
sanctioned and secured. This was effected in no slight degree 
by the furious spirit of Margaret, who began a system of 
extermination by acts of attainder and execution of prisoners 
that created abhorrence, though it did not prevent imitation. 
And the barbarities of her Northern army, whom she led 
towards London after the battle of Wakefield, lost the Lan- 
castrian cause its former friends, and might justly convince 
reflecting men that it were better to risk the cliances of a new 
dynasty than trust the kingdom to an exasperated faction. 

§ 34. A period of obscurity and confusion ensues, during 
which we have as little insight into constitutional as general 
history. There are no contemporary chroniclers of any value, 
and the rolls of Parliament, by whose light we have hitherto 
steered, become mere registers of private bills, or of petitions 
relating to commerce. The reign of Edward IV. is the first 
during which no statute was passed for the redress of griev- 
ances or maintenance of the subject's liberty. Nor is there, 
if I am correct, a single petition of this nature upon the roll. 
The reign of Edward IV. was the reign of terror. One half 
of the noble families had been thinned by proscription ; and 
though generally restored in blood by the reversal of their at- 
tainders — a measure certainly deserving of much approbation 
— were still under the eyes of vigilant and inveterate enemies. 
Besides the severe proceedings against the Lancastrian party, 
which might be extenuated by the common pretences — retalia- 
tion of similar proscriptions, security for the actual govern- 
ment, or just punishment of rebellion against a legitimate heir 
— there are several reputed instances of violence and barbarity 
in the reign of Edward IV. which have not such plausible 
excuses. Every one knows the common stories of the citizen 
who was attainted of treason for an idle speech that he would 
make his son heir to the crown, the house where he dwelt ; 
and of Thomas Burdett, who wished the horns of his stag in 
the belly of him who had advised the king to shoot it. Of the 
former I can assert nothing, though I do not believe it to be 
accurately reported. But certainly the accusation against Bur- 
dett, however iniquitous, was not confined to these frivolous 
words ; which, indeed, do not appear in his indictment, or in a 
passage relative to his conviction in the roll of Parliament. 



536 EDWARD IV. Chap. VIII. Pakt III. 

Burdett was a servant and friend of the Dnke of Clarence, and 
sacriticed as a preliminary victim. It was an article of charge 
against Clarence that he had attempted to persuade the people 
that " Thomas Burdett, his servant, which was laAvfully and 
truly attainted of treason, was wrongfully put to death." There 
could, indeed, be no more opi)ressive usage inflicted upon 
meaner persons than this attainder of the Duke of Clarence — 
an act for which a brother could not be pardoned, had he been 
guilty, and which deepens the shadow of a tyrannical age, if, 
as it seems, his offence towards Edward was but levity and 
rashness. 

But whatever acts of injustice we may attribute, from au- 
thority or conjecture, to Edward's government, it was very far 
from l3eing unpopular. His love of i)leasure, his affability, his 
courage and beauty, gave him a credit with his subjects which 
he had no real virtue to challenge. This restored him to the 
throue, even against the prodigious influence of Warwick, and 
compelled Henry VII. to treat his memory with respect, and 
acknowledge him as a lawful king. The latter years of his 
reign were passed in repose at home after scenes of unparalleled 
convulsions, and in peace abroad after more than a century of 
expensive warfare. He was the first who practised a new 
method of taking his subjects' money without consent of Par- 
liament, under the plausible name of benevolences. These 
came in place of the still more plausible loans of former mon- 
archs, and were principally levied on the wealthy traders. 
Though no complaint appears in the Parliamentary records of 
his reign, which, as has been observed, complain of nothing, 
the illegality was undoubtedly felt and resented. In Richard 
III.'s only Parliament an act was passed which, after reciting 
in the strongest terms the grievances lately endured, abrogates 
and annuls forever all exactions under the name of benevolence. 
The liberties of this country were at least not directly impaired 
by the usurpation of Richard ; but from an act so deeply 
tainted with moral gujlt, as well as so violent in all its circum- 
stances, no substantial benefit was likely to spring. Whatever 
difficulty there may be in deciding upon the fate of Richard's 
nephews after they were immured in the Tower, the more 
public parts of the transaction bear unequivocal testimony to 
his ambitious usurpation. ^^ Jt would, therefore, be foreign to 

36 The long-debatt'd question as to the murder of Edward and his brother seems to 
me moro probably solved on the common supposition tliat it was really perpetrated 
by the orders of Richard, than on that of Walpole, Carte, Henry, and Laing, who 
maintain that the Dulve of Yorli, at least, was in some way released from the Tower, 
and reappeared as Perkin Warbeck. J3ut a very strong conviction either way is not 
readily attainable. 



English Const. CONCLUSION. 537 

the purpose of this chapter to dwell ujion his assumption of 
the regency, or upon the sort of election, however curious 
and remarkable, Avhich gave a pretended authority to his visur- 
pation of the tlirone. Neither of these has ever been alleged 
by any party in the way of constitutional precedent. 

§ 35. At this epoch I terminate these inquiries into the 
English constitution. From the accession of the house of 
Tudor a new period is to be dated in our history, far more 
prosperous in the diffusion of opulence and the preservation of 
general order than the preceding, but less distinguished by the 
spirit of freedom and jealousy of tyrannical power. We have 
seen, through the twilight of our Anglo-Saxon records, a form 
of civil policy established by our ancestors, marked, like the 
kindred governments of tlie Contiiient, with aboriginal Teu- 
tonic features ; barbarous indeed, and insufficient for the great 
ends of society, but capable and worthy of the improvement it 
has received, because actuated by a sound and vital si)irit. the 
love of freedom and of justice. From these principles arose 
that venerable institution, which none but a free and simiile 
people could have conceived, trial by peers — an institution 
common in some degree to other nations, but which, more 
widely extended, more strictly retained, and better modihed 
among ourselves, has become perhaps the first, certainly among 
the first, of our securities against arbitrary government. We 
have seen a foreign conqueror and his descendan'^s trample 
almost alike upon the prostrate nation and upon those who had 
been companions of their victory, introduce the servitudes of 
feudal law with more than their usual rigor, and establish a 
large revenue by continual precedents upon a system of univer- 
sal and prescriptive extortion. But the Norman and English 
races, each unfit to endure oppression, forgetting their animos- 
ities in a common interest, enforce by arms the concession of 
a great charter of liberties. Privileges wrested from one faith- 
less monarch are preserved with continual vigilance against 
the machinations of another; the rights of the people become 
more precise, and their spirit more magnanimous, during the 
long reign of Henry III. With greater ambition, and greater 
al)ilities than his father, Edward I. attempts in vain to govern 
in an arbitrary manner, and has the mortification of seeing his 
prerogative fettered by still more important limitations. The 
great council of the nation is opened to the representatives of 
the Commons. They proceed by slow and cautious steps to 
remonstrate against })ublic grievances, to check the abuses of 
administration, and sometimes to chastise public delinquency 



538 CONCLUSION. Pabt IIL 

in the officers of the crown. A nnmber of remedial provisions 
are added to the statutes ; every Englishman learns to remem- 
ber that he is the citizen of a free state, and to claim the com- 
mon law as his birthright, even though the violence of power 
should interrupt its enjoyment. It were a strange misrepre- 
sentation of history to assert that the constitution had attained 
anything like a perfect state in the lifteenth century ; but I 
know not whether there are any essential privileges of our coun- 
trymen, any fundamental securities against arbitrary power, 
so far as they depend upon positive institution, which may 
not be traced to the time when the house of Plantagenet filled 
the English throne. 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. 



539 



NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII. — Part III. 



I. MUNICIPAL RIGHTS OF LONDON. 

London was from a very early period, 
divided into wards, answering to liun- 
dreds in the county; eacli liaviug its own 
ward- mote, or leet, under its elected alder- 
man. " The city of London, as well with- 
in the walls, as its liberties without the 
walls, has been divided from time im- 
memorial into wards, bearing nearly the 
same relation to the city tliat the hundred 
anciently did to the shire. Each ward is, 
for certain purposes, a distinct jurisdic- 
tion. The organization of the existing 
municipal constitution of the city is, and 
always has been, as far as can be traced, 
entirely founded upon the ward system." 
(Introduction to the French Chronicle of 
London. — Camden Society, 1844.) But the 
portreeve of London, their principal ma- 
gistrate, appears to have been appointed 
by the crown. It was not till 1188, the year 
before the death of Henry II., that Henry 
Fitzalwyn, ancestor of the present Lord 
Beaumont,* became the first mayor of 
London. But he also was nominated by 
the crown, and remained twenty-four 
years in otfice. In the same year the first 
sheriffs are said to have been made {fac- 
ti). But Jolin, immediately after his" ac- 
cession in ll'J9, granted the citizens leave 
to choose their own sheriffs. And his 
charter of 1215 permits them to elect an- 
nually their mayor. (Maitland's Hist, of 
Loudon, pp. 74, 70.) We read, however, 
under the year 1200, in the ancient chron- 
icle previously quoted, that twenty-five of 
the most discreet men of the city were 
chosen and sworn to advise for the city, 
togetlier with the mayor. These were ev- 
idently different from the aldermen, and 
are the original common council of the 
city. They were perhaps meant in a later 
entry (1229) : " Omnes aldermanni et mag- 
nates civitatis per assensum universorum 
civium,"who are said to have agreed nev- 
er to permit a sheriff to remain iu office 
durhig two consecutive years. 

The city and liberties of London were 
not wholly under the jurisdiction of the 
several wardmotes and their aldermen. 



* Thia pedigree ia elaborately traced by Mr. Stapleton, in 
hia excellent introiluction to the old chronicle of London, al- 
ready quoted. The name Alwyn appears rather Saion than 
Norman, ao that we may presume the first mayor to have 
been of English descent ; but whether be were a merchant, or 
a land-owner living in the city, must he unilecided. 



Land-holders, secular and ecclesiastical, 
possessetl their exclusive sokes, or juris- 
dictions, in parts of both. One of these 
has left its name to the ward of Portso- 
ken. The prior of the Holy Trinity, in 
right of tills district, ranked as an alder- 
man, and held a regular ward-inote. 
The wards of Farringtion are denomi- 
nated from a family of that name, who 
held a part of them by hereditary right 
as their territorial franchise. These sokes 
gave way so gradually before the power 
of the citizens, with whom, as may be 
supposed, a perpetual conflict was main- 
tained, that there were nearly thirty of 
them in the early part of the reign of 
Henry III., and upward of twenty in that 
of Edward I. With the e.\ception of Port- 
soken, they were not commensurate with 
the city wards, and we find the juries of 
the wards in the third of Edward I., pre- 
senting the sokes as liberties enjoyed by 
private persons or ecclesiastical corpora- 
tions to the detriment of the crown. But, 
though the lords of these sokes trenched 
materially on the exclusive privileges of 
the city, it is remarkable that, no condi- 
tion but inhabitancy being required in 
the thirteenth century for civic franchises, 
both they and their tenants were citizens, 
having individually a voice iu municipal 
affairs, though exempt from municipal ju- 
risdiction. I have taken most of this 
paragraph from a valuable thougli short 
notice of the state of Lonilon in the thir- 
teenth century, published in the fourth vol- 
ume of the Archajological Journal (p. 273). 
The inference whicli suggests itself from 
these facts is that London, for more than 
two centuries after the Conquest, was not 
so exclusively a city of traders, a demo- 
cratic municipality, as we have been wont 
to conceive. And as this evidently ex- 
tends back to the Anglo-Saxon period, it 
both lessens the improbability that the 
citizens bore at times a part in political 
affairs, and exhibits them in a new light, 
as lords and tenants of lords, as well as, 
what of course tliey were in part, engaged 
in foreign and domestic commerce. It will 
strike everyone in running over tlielistof 
mayors and sheriffs in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, that a large proportion of the names 
are French; indicating, perhaps, that the 
territorial proprietors whose sokes were 
intermingled with the citv had influence 
enougli, through birtli and wealth, to ob- 



540 



NOTES ON CHAPTEIl VIII. 



tain an election. The general polity, Sax- 
on and Norman, was aristocratic; what- 
ever infusion there might be of a more 
popular sclieme of government, and much 
certainly tliere was, could not resist, even 
if resistance had been always the people's 
desire, the joint predominance of ranlc, 
riches, military liabits, and common al- 
liance, whicli the great baronage of the 
realm enjoyed. London, nevertheless, 
from its populousness, and the usual 
cliaracter of cities, was the centre of a 
democratic power, wliich, bursting at 
times into precipitate and needless tumult 
easily rei)ressed by force, kept on its silent 
course till, near the end of tlie thirteenth 
century, tlie rights of the citizens and 
burgesses in the legislature were consti- 
tutionally established. 

II. POPULAR POETKY. ^ 

The public history of Europe in the 
Middle Ages inadequately represents the 
popular sentiment, or only wlien it is ex- 
pressed too loudly to escape the regard of 
writers intent sometimes on less impor- 
tant subjects. But when we descend below 
the surface, a sullen murmur of discontent 
meets the ear, and we perceive that man- 
kind was not more insensible to wrongs 
and sutlerings than at present. Besides 
tlie various outbreakings of the peojile in 
several counties, and their comphiints in 
I'arliament, after the Commons obtained 
a rej)resentation, we gain a conchisive in- 
siglit into the spirit of tlie times by tlieir 
popular poetry. Two very interesting col- 
lections of this kind have been published 
bv the Camden .Society : one, tlie poems 
attributed to Walter Mapes; the other, the 
Political .Songs of England, from John to 
Edward II. 

Mapes lived under Henry II., and has 
long been known as the reputed author 
of humorous Latin verses; but it seems 
much more probable that the far greater 
part of the collection lately printed is not 
from liis liand. They may pass, not for 
the production of a single person, but 
rather of a class, during many years, or, 
in general words, a century, ending witli 
the death of Ilenrv III. in IL'7'.'. Many of 
them are professedly written by an iinagi- 
liarv (iolias. 

" Phcx' are not the expressions of hos- 
tility of one man against an order of 
monks, but of the indignant patriotism 
of a considerable portion of the English 
nation ao-ainst the encroachments of civil 
and ec(•ll'^iastical tvranny." — (Introduc- 
tion to I'oems ascril)ed to Walter Mapes, 
p. 21.) Tlie poems in this collection reflect 
almost entirely on tlie pope and the higher 
clergv. They are all in rhvming Latin, 
and chiefly, though with exceptions, in the 



loose trochaic metre called Leonine. The 
authors, therefore, must have been clerks, 
actuated by the spirit which, in a church 
of great inequality in its endowments, and 
with a very numerous body of poor clergy, 
is apt to gain strength, but certainly, as 
ecclesiastical history bears witness, not 
one of mere envious malignity towards 
the prelates and the court of Konie. 
These deserved nothing better, in the 
thirteenth century, than biting satire and 
indignant reproof, and the poets were 
willing enough to bestow both. 

But this popular ])oetry of the Middle 
Ages did not contine itself to the Church. 
In the collection entitled "Political 
Songs " we have some reflecting on Henry 
III., some on the general administration. 
The famous song on the battle of Lewes, 
in 12C4, is the earliest in English ; but in 
the reign of Edward I. several occur in 
that language. Others are in French or 
in Latin ; one complaining of the ta.xes is 
in an odd mi.xtureof these two languages; 
which, indeed, is not without other exam- 
ples in media'val poetry. These Latin 
songs could not, of course, have been gen- 
erally understood. But what the priests 
sung in Latin, they said in English; the 
lower clergy fanned the flame, and gave 
utterance to what others felt. It may, 
perhaps, be remarked, as a proof of gen- 
eral sympathy with the democratic spirit 
wliich was then ferinenting, that we have 
a song of exultation on the great defeat 
which Philip IV. had just sustained at 
Courtrai, in 1302, by the burgesses of the 
Flemish cities, on whose liberties he had 
attempted to trample (p. 1S7). It is true 
that Edward I. was on ill terms with 
France, but the political interests of the 
king would not, perhaps, have dictated 
the popular ballad. 

Some of the political songs are written 
in France, though relating to our kings 
.John and Henry III. Deducting these, 
we have two in Latin for the former 
reign; seven in Latin, three in French 
(or what the editor calls Anglo-Norman, 
which is really the same thing), one in a 
mixture of the two, and one in English, 
for the reign of Henry III. In the reigns 
of Edward 1. and Edward II. we have 
eight in Latin, three in French, nine in 
English, and four in mixed languages — a 
style employed probably for amusement. 
It'must be observed that a large propor- 
tion of these songs contain panegyric and 
exultation on victory rather than satire; 
and that of the satire much is general, 
and much falls on the Church; so that the 
animadversions on the king and the no- 
bility are not very freipient, though with 
considerable boldness; hut this is more 
shown in the Latin than the English 
poems. 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



541 



ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. 



I. CHARTER OF LIBERTIES OF HENRY I. 

Anno Incarnationis Doniinicae jrCI". 
Hknuicus fu-ius \Vii,i,i;lmi itucis jiost 
obituni fratris sui W'illcliiii, Dt'i gratia 
rex Aiiglorum, omnibus li<i<'libiis sahitt^m. 

1. Sciatis iiie Dei niisericorclia et com- 
muni coiisilio baronum totius regni An- 
gliae ejusdem regni regem coronatum 
esse; et quia regnum oppressum erat in- 
justis exactionibus, ego, Dei respectu et 
amore quein erga vos liabeo, sanctam Dei 
ecclesiaiu inipriuiis liberain facio, itaquod 
nee vendain nee ad firniani ponani, nee 
mortuo arcliiepiscopo sive episcopo sive 
abbate aliquid accipiam de dominico ee- 
clesiae vel de hominibus ejus donee suc- 
cessor in earn iiigrediatur. Et onines 
nialas consuetudines quibus regnum An- 
gliae injuste opprimebatur inde aufero 
quas nialas consuetudines ex parte liic 
pono : 

2. Si quis baronum, comitum mcorum 
sive aliorum qui de me tenent, mortuus 
fuerit, liaeres suus non redimet terrani 
suam sicut faciebat tempore fratris mei, 
sed justa et legitima relevatione relevabit 
earn. Similiter et homines baronum me- 
orum justa et legitima relevatione releva- 
bunt terras suas de dominis suis. 

3. Kt si quis baronum vel aliorum ho- 
minuin meoruin tiliam suam uuptum tra- 
dere voluerit sive sororem sive neptim 
sive cognatam, niecum inde loquatur; sed 
neque ego aliquid de suo pro hac licentia 
accipiam neque defendant ei quin eam det, 
exeepto si eam vellet jungere inimico meo. 
Et si mortuo barone sive alio liomine meo 
filia liaeres remanserit, illam dabo consi- 
lio baroimm meorum cum terra sua. Et 
si mortuo viro uxor ejus remanserit et 
sine liberis fuerit, dotom suam et marita- 
tionem habebit, et eam non dabo marito 
nisi secundum velle suum. 

4. Si vero uxor cum liberis remanserit, 
dotem quidcm et mnritationem habebit, 
dum corpus suuin legitime servaverit, et 
eam non dabo nisi secundum velle suum. 
Et terrae et liberorum custos erit sive uxor 
sive alius propinquorum qui justius esse 
debeat. Et praecipio quod barones mei 
similiter se contineant erga filios et filias 
vel uxores hominum suorum. 

5. Monetagium commune quod capie- 
batur per civitates et comitatus quod non 
ftiit tempore regis Ed\vardi,hocne amodo 
tiat oMiiiiuo defendo. Si quis captus fue- 
rit sive monetarius sive alius cum falsa 
moneta, justitia recta inde fiat. 

6. Omuia placita et omnia debita quae 
fratri meo debebantur eondono, exceptis 
rectis firmis meis et exceptis illis quae 
pacta erant pro aliorum haereditatibus 
vel pro eis rebus quae justius aliis contin 
gebant. Et si quis pro haereditate sua 



aliquid pepigerat, illud eondono, et omnes 
relevati<ints (juae pro rectis haereditatibus 
pactae fm'iant. 

7. Et si quis baronum vel hominum 
meorum infirniabitur, sicut ipse dabit vel 
dare disponet pecuuiam suam, ita datam 
esse concedo. Quod si ipse praeventus 
armis vel iufirmitate, pecuuiam suam non 
dederit vel dare disposuerit, uxor sua sive 
liberi aut parentes, et legitimi homines 
ejus eam pro anima ejus dividaut, sicut 
eis melius visum fuerit. 

8. Si quis baronum sive hominum me- 
orum forisfecerit, non dabit vadium in 
misericordia pecuniae, sicut faciebat tem- 
pore patris mei vel fratris mei, sed secun- 
dum modum forisfaeti, ita emendabit sicut 
emendasset retro a tempore patris mei, in 
tempore aliorum antecessorum meorum. 
Quod si perrtdiae vel sceleris convictus 
fuerit, sicut justum fuerit, sic emendet. 

9. Murdra etiam retro ab ilia die qua in 
regem coroiiatus fui omnia eondono : et ea 
quae amodo facta fuerint, juste emenden- 
tur secundum lagam regis Edwardi. 

10. Forestas communi consensu baro- 
num meorum in manu mea retinui, sicut 
pater meus eas habuit. 

11. Militibus qui per loricas terras suas 
defendant, terras dominicarum carruca- 
rum suarum quietas ab omnibus gildis, et 
omni opere, proprio dono meo concedo, 
ut sicut tam niagno allevamine alleviati 
sint, ita se equis et armis bene instrusmt 
ad servitium meum et ad defensionem 
regni mei. 

12. Pacem firmam in toto regno meo 
pono et teneri amodo praecipio. 

1.3. Lagam Edwardi regis vobls reddo 
cum illis emendationibus quibus pater 
meus eam emendavit consilio baronum 
suorum. 

H. Si quis aliquid de rebus meis vel de 
rebus alicujus post obitum Willelmi regis 
fratris mei cepeiit, totum cito sine cmen- 
datione reddatur, et si quis inde aliquid 
retinuerit, ille super quern inventum fue- 
rit mihi graviter emendabit. 

Testibus .Alauricio Lundoniae episcopo 
et Gundulfo episcopo et Willelmo electo 
episcopo et Henrico comite et Simone 
comite et Waltero GiflTardo et Rodberto 
de Montfort et Rogero Bigoto et Henrico 
de Portu, apud Lundoniam quando fui 
coronatus. — ("Ancient Laws and Insti- 
tutes," p. 215.) 



11. constitutions of clarendon. 

Anno ab Incarnatione Domini 
M°(J''ry.\°IV°, pnpatiis Alexandri anno 
I V'", illustrissinii regis Anglorum Henrici 
secundi anno deeimo, in praesentia ejus- 
dem regis, facta est ista recordatio vel 



542 



NOTES ON CHAl'TEU VIII. 



recognito cujusdam partis consuetudinum 
et libertatuMi et diguitatura antecessoruiu 
suorum, videlicet regis Heurici avi sui, et 
aliormn, quae observari et teneri debent 
in regno. Et propter disseusiones et dis- 
cordias quae emerserant inter cleruni et 
Justilias doinini regis et barones regni de 
consuetudinibus et diguitatibus, facta est 
ista recognitio coram arcliiepiscopis et 
episcopis et clero et comitibus et baronibus 
et proceribus regni. Et easdem consue- 
tudines recognitas per arehiepiscopos et 
episcopos et comites et barones et per 
nobiliores et antiquiores regni, Thomas 
Cantuariensi;; archifpisco])US. et Rogerus 
KlxiiMoriisis arcliirpiscopus, et ( iillebertus 
I^ondiiniensis episcdjius, et Hcuricus Wil- 
ton iensis episeopus, et Nigellus Eliensis 
episcopus, et Willelmus Norwicensis epis- 
eopus, et RObertus Lincolniensis episco- 
pus, et Hilarius Cicestrensis episcopus, et 
Joceliuus Sarisberiensis episcopus, et Ui- 
cardus Cistrensis episcopus, et Hartliolo- 
maeus Exonicnsis ejiiscopus, et Robertus 
Hcrt-forilensis cpiscciijus, et David iNIen- 
eveiisis cpiseoinis, et Kogerus Wigornensis 
electus, concesserunt, et in Verbo Veritatis 
viva voce lirmiter promiserunt tenandas et 
observandas, domino regi et haeredibus 
suis, bona lide et absque malo ingenio, 
praesentibus istis: Roberto comite Le- 
ghestriae, IJeginaldo comite Cornubiae, 
Conano comite ISritanniae, Johanna comi- 
te de Augo, Rogcro comite de Clara, comite 
Gaufrcdo de Mandivilla, Hugone comite 
Cestriae, Willelmo comite de Arundel, 
comite I'atricio, Willelmo comite de Fer- 
rariis, Ricardo de Luci, Reginaldo de 
Sancto Walerico, Rogero IJigot, Reginaldo 
de Warennia, Ricliero de Aquila, Wil- 
lelmo de Uraiosa, Ricardo de (lanivilla, 
Nigello de Moubrai, Simone de Hello 
Campo, Humfrido de Boun, Matlhaeode 
Hereforilia, Waltero de Meduana, ilanas 
sero Bisetii dapifero, Willelmo Malet, 
Willelmo de Curci, Roberto de Dunstan- 
villa, Jocelino de Raillolio, Willelmo de 
Lanvalis, Willelmo de Caisneto, Gaufrido 
de Ver, U'illelnio de Ilastinges, Hugone 
de Morevilla, Alano de Nevilla, Simone 
Alio Petri, Willelmo INlalduit camerario, 
Johanne Malduit, Johanne Alariscallo, 
Petro de Mara, et niultis aliis proceribus 
et nobilius regni, tarn clericis quam laicis. 

Consuetudinum vero et dignatatum reg- 
ni recognitarum quaedam pars praesenti 
scripto continetur. Cujus partis capitula 
haec sunt : 

Cap. i. De advocationeet praesentatione 
ecclesiarum si controversia emerserit inter 
laicos, vel inter laicos et clericos, vel in- 
ter clericos, in curia domini regis tractetur 
vel terminetur. 

Cap. ii. Ecclesiae de feudo domini regis 
noil possunt in perpetuum dari absque 
assensu et concessione ipsius. 

Cap. iii. Clerici rectati et accusati de 
quacunque re, summoniti a .lustitia regis 
venient in curiam ipsius, responsuri ibi- 
dem de hoc uude videbitur curiae regis 



quod ibidem sit respondendum ; et in curia 
ecclesiastica, uude videbitur quod ibidem 
sit respondendum: ita quod Justitia regis 
mittet in curiam sanctaeecclesia ad viden- 
dum tpia ratione res ibi tractabitur. Et si 
clericus couviclus vel confessus f uerit, uon 
debet de cetero eum ecclesia tueri. 

Cap. iv. Arcliiepiscopis, episcopis, et 
persouis regni, non licet exire de regno 
absque liceiitia domini regis. Et si exi- 
erint, si domino regi placuerit, assecura- 
buiit, quod nee ineuudo, nee in moram 
faciendo, nee in redeundo.perquireut ma- 
lum vel damnum regi vel regno. 

Cap. V. Excoinmunicati non debent dare 
vadium ad remaiiens, nee praestare jura- 
mentum, sed tantuin vadium et plegium 
standi judicio ecclesiae nt absolvantur. 

Ciip. vi. Laici non debent accusari nisi 
per certos et legales accusatores et testes 
in praesentia episco])i, ita quod arcliidia- 
conus noniiiTdat jussuum; neequicquara 
quod iiuie h.iliere debeat. Et si tales fue- 
rint qui culpantur, quod non velit vel non 
audeat aliquis eos accusare, vicecomes 
requisitus ab episcopo faciet jurare duo- 
decini legales homines de viciiieto sen de 
villa, coram episcopo, quod inde veritatem 
secundum conscientiam suaiu maniCesta- 
bunt. 

Cap. vii. Nullus qui de rege tenet in 
capite, nee aliquis dominicorum ministro- 
rum ejus,exc()mmuiiicetur, nee terrae ali- 
eujus illorum sub iiiterdicto ponantur, nisi 
l>rius domiiius rex, si in terra fuerit, con- 
veniatur, vel .lustitia ejus, si fuerit extra 
regnum, ut rectum de ipso facial et ita ut 
ipiod pertiuebit ad curiam regiam ibidem 
terminetur, et de eo quod spectabit ad 
ecclesiasticam curiam, ad eaudem mitta- 
tur ut ibidem tractetur. 

Cap. viii. De appilhilionibus si emerse- 
rint, ab archidiai-oiM ilcbent jirocedere ad 
episcopum.ab episcojio ail aicliiepiscopum. 
Et si archiepiscopus defecerit in justitia 
exhibenda, ad domiuuin regem perveni- 
endum est postremo, ut praecepto ipsius 
in curia archiepiscopi controversia ter- 
minetur, ita quod non debet ulterius pro- 
cedere absque assensu domini regis. 

Cap. ix. .Si calumnia emerserit inter 
elericum et laicum, vel inter laicum et 
clericum, de ullo tenemento quod clericus 
ad eleemosinam velit attraliere, laicus vero 
ad laicum feudum, recognitione duodecim 
legalium homiiium, per eapitalis .Justitiae 
regiseoiisjderationem terniinabitur,utrum 
teneineiitiiin sit pertinens ad eleemosiiiain 
sive ad laicum feudum coram ipso .lustitia 
regis. Et si recognifum fuerit ad eleemo- 
sinam pertinere, iilacitum erit in curia 
ecclesiastica, si vero ad laicum feudum, 
nisi ambo de eodem episcopo vel barone 
advocaverint.erit placitum in curia regia. 
Sed si uterque advoc.averit de feudo illo 
ante eundem episcopum vel baroncm, erit 
placitum in curia i|)sius; ita quod propter 
factam recognitioneni seisinam non aniit- 
tat, qui prior seisitus fuerat, donee per 
placitum dirationatuiu fuerit. 



NOTES ON" CHAPTER VITT. 



543 



Cap. X. Qui de civitate, vel burgo, vel 
douiinlco niaiierio doiiiini regis fiiei'it, si 
ab arcliidiacono vel episcopo super aliquo 
delicto citatus fuerit, uiide debeat eisdem 
respondere et ad citationes eoruin satis- 
facere noluerit, bene licet eum sub iiiter- 
dicto pouere, sed non debet exconiinuiii- 
cari priusquani capitalis minister domini 
regis villae illius conveniatur, et justiciet 
eum ad satisfactionem venire. Et si mi 
nister regis inde defecerit, ipse erit in 
misericordia domini regis, et exinde pote- 
rit episcopus ipsum accusatum ecclesias- 
ticii justitia cohibere. 

Cap. xi. Archiepiscopi, episcopi, et uni- 
versae personae regni, qui de rege tenent 
in capita, habent possessiones suas de 
domino rege sicut baroniam, et' inde re- 
spondent justitiis et ministris regis, et 
sequuntur et faciunt omnes rectitudines 
et cousuetudines regias, et sicut barones 
ceteri, debent interesse judiciis curiae 
domini regis cum barouibus, usque dam 
perveniatur in judicio ad dimiiiutiouem 
membrorum vel mortem 

Cap. xii. Cum vacaverit arcliiepiscopa- 
tus, vel episcopatus, vel abbatia, vel prio- 
ratus de dominio regis, debet esse in manu 
ipsius, et inde percipiet omnes reditus et 
e.\itus sicut dominicos. Et cum ventum 
fuerit ad consulendum ecclesiae, debet 
dominus re.x mandare potiores personas 
ecclesiae, et in capella ipsius domini regis 
debet fieri electio assensu domini regis et 
consilio personarum regni, quas ad hoc 
faciendum vocaverit. Et ibidem faciet 
electus homaglum et fidelitatem domino 
regi sicut ligio domino, de vita sua et de 
membris et de lionore suo terreno, salvo 
ordine suo, priusquam sit consecratns. 

Cap xiii. Si quiscjuam de proceribus 
regni defortiaverit archiepiscopo, vel cjiis 
copo, vel archidiacono, de se xcl de suis 
justitiara exhibere,d(jminus rex delict eos 
justiciare. Et si forte uli(juis (icfditiasi-rit 
domino regi rectitu<lin('m suaiii, arcliiipis 
copiet episcopi etarchidiacoiii debent eum 
justiciare ut domino regi satisfaciat. 

Cap. xiv. Catalla eorum qui sunt in 
forisfacto regis non detineat ecclesia vel 
cimiteriiim contra justitiam regis, (juia 
ipsius regis sunt, sive in ecclesiis sive 
extra fuerint inventa. 

Cap. XV. Placita de debifis, quae fide 
interposita debentnr, vel abscpie interposi- 
tione fidei, sint in justitia regis. 

Cap. xvi. Filii rusticorum non debent 
ordinari absque assensu doniitu de cujus 
terra nati dignoscuntur. 

Facta est autem praedictarum consuetu- 
dinum et dignitatum recordatio regiaruni 
a praefatis archiepiscopis et episccipis et 
comitibus et baronibus, et nobilioril)us, et 
anti(jiiioribus regni, apud Clarendonjim 
qn.'irto die ante Pnrificationem ISeatae 
Mariae perpetuae Virginis, domino Hen- 
rico cum patre suo domino rege ibidem 
praesente. Sunt autem et aliae rnultae et 
magn.ae cousuetudines et dignifates sanc- 
tae matris ecclesiae et domini regis et 



baronum regni, quae in hoc scripto nou 
coutineutur. Quae salvae sint sanctae 
ecclesiae et domino regi et haeredibus suis 
et baronibus regni, et perpetuum inviola- 
biliter observentur. — (Lyttelton's "Life 
of Henry II.," vol. iv., pp. 182-185, from 
MS. Cotton, Claudius B. 2.) 

III. ASSIZE OF CL.\RENDON. 

Incipit Assisa de Clarenduna facta a rege 
Henrico, scilicet secimdo, de assensu 
archieijiscoporum, episciiporam, abba- 
tuni, comiluni, baronum, totiiis Angliae. 

1. Imprimis statuit praedictus rex Hen- 
ri cusde consilio omnium baron urn suorum, 
pro pace servanda et justitia tenenda, quod 
per singulos comitatus in(iuiratur, et per 
singulos hundredos per .xii. legaliores hom- 
ines de hundredo, et per iv. legaliores 
homines de qualibet villata, per sacramen- 
tum quod illi verum dicent ; si in hundredo 
suo vel villata sua sit aliquis homo qui sit 
rettatus vel publicatus quod ipse sit roba- 
tor vel iimrdrator vel latro vel aliquis qui 
sit receptor robatorum vel murdratorum 
vel latrouum, postquam dominus rex fuit 
rex. Et hoc inipiirant Justitiae coram se, 
et vicecomites coram se. 

2. Et qui invenietur per sacramentum 
praedictorum rettatus vel publicatus quod 
fuerit robator vel murdrator vel latro vel 
receptor eorum, postquam dominus rex 
fuit rex, capiatur et eat ad juisam aquae, 
et juret quod ipse non fuit robator vel 
murdrator vel latro vel receptor eorum 
postquam dominus rex fuit rex, de valen- 
tia V. solidorum quod sciat. 

3. Et si dominus ejus qui captiis fuerit 
vel dapifer ejus vel homines ejus requisi- 
erint eum per plegium infra tertium diem 
|»)sti|uam captus fuerit, rejilegiatur ijise et 
catalla ejus donee ipse faciat legem suam. 

4. Et quando robator vel murdrator vel 
latro vel reeeptores eorum capti fuerint 
per praedictum sacramentum, si Justitiae 
non fuerint tarn cito venturae in ilium 
comitatum ubi capti fuerint, vicecomites 
inandent propin(|uori Justitiae per ali- 
(juem intelligeMtem hominem, quod tales 
homines ceperiut; et Justitiae remanda- 
bunt viceeomitihus ubi voluerint quod 
illi ducantur ante illos : et vicecomites 
illos ducant ante Justitias; et cum illis 
ducant de hundredo etde villata ubi capti 
fuerint, duos legales homines ad portan- 
dum recordationeiri comitatus et hundred!, 
(juare capti fuerint, et Ibi ante Justitiam 
facient legem suam. 

5. Et de illis qui capti fuerint per prae- 
ilictum sacramentum hujus Assisae, nuUus 
habeat curiam vel justitiam nee catalla, 
nisi dominus rex in curia sua coram Jus- 
titiis ejus, et dominus rex habebit omnia 
catalla eorum. De illis vero qui capti fu- 
erint aliter quam per hoc sacramentum, 
sit sicut esse solet ei debet. 

6. Et vicecomites qui eos ceperint du- 
caut eos ante Justitiam sine alia sum- 



544 



NOTES OX CHAPTEK VIIL 



monitione quam inde habeant. Et cum 
robatores vel miirdiatores vel latront'S et 
receptoies eorum, qui capti fuerint per 
sacraiiieutum vel aliter, tradantur vice- 
comitibus, et ipsi recipiaut cos statim sine 
dilatione. 

7. Kt in singulis comitatibus ubi non 
sunt gaiolae, tiant in buigo vel aliquo 
castello regis de denariis regi set bosco 
ejus si prope fuerit, vel de alio bosco pro- 
pinquo, per visum servientiuiu regis, ad 
hoc ut vicecomites in illis possiut illos qui 
capti fuerint per ministros qui hoc facere 
Solent et per servientes suos, custodire. 

8. Vult etiam doniinus rex quod omnes 
veniant ad comitatus ad lioc sacramentum 
faciendum, ita quod nullus remaneat pro 
libertate aliquaquam luibeat, vel curia vel 
soca quam liabuerit, quin veniant ad hoc 
sacramentum faciendum. 

9. Et non sit aliquis infra castellum vel 
extra castellum, nee etiani in honore de 
Walingeford, qui vetet vicecomites intrare 
in curiam vel terram suam ad videndos 
francos plegios, et quod omnes sint sub 
plegiis : et ante vicecomites mittantur sub 
libero plegio. 

10. Et in civitatibus vel burgis nullus 
habeat homines vel recipiat in domo sua 
vel terra sua vel soca sua, quos non in 
manu capiat (juod eos habebit coram Jus- 
titia si requisiti fuerint, vel sint sub fran- 
coplegio. 

11. Et nulli sint in civitate vel burgo 
vel castello vel extra, nee in lionore etiaiu 
de Walingeford, qui vetent vicecomites 
intrare in terram suam vel socam suam, 
ad capiendum illos qui rettati fuerint vel 
pnblicati quod sint robatores vel murdra- 
tores vel latrones vel receptores eorum, 
vel utlagati vel rettati de foresta; sed 
praecipit quod juvent illos ad capiendum 
eos. 

12. Et si aliquis fuerit captus qui fuerit 
saisiatus de roberia vel latrocinio, si ipse 
fuerit dilfamatus et habeat malum testi- 
monium de publicamento, et non habeat 
waraiitum, non liabeat legem. Et si non 
fuerit |>iil)licalus jjro saisina quam liabet, 
eat ad aquam. 

1:$. Et si aliquis fuerit recognoscens 
coram legal ibus hominibus vel hundred is 
de roberia vel niurdro vel latrocinio vel 
de reoeptione eorum, et postea negare 
voluerit, non habeat legem. 

14. Vult etiam dominus rex quod ipsi 
qui facient legem suam et nniiiili erant |)cr 
legem, si ipsi fuerint de pessinio teslimo- 
nio, et piiblice et turpiter ditl'Mniati ti'sti- 
monio multoruin et iegalimn liominum, 
foras jureiit terras regis, ita quod intra 
viii. dies mare transibunt, nisi aura eos 
ilctinuerit; et cum prima aura (piam lia- 
bebuiit )>oste,i mare transibunt, et ultra in 
Angliam non revertentur nisi per miscri- 
cordiam doniini regis: et il)i sint utlagati 
et si redierent; et si redierint capiantur 
sicut utlagati. 

15. Et prohibet dominus rex ne aliquis 
vaivus, id est vagus vel ignotus, hospite- 



tur alicubi nisi in burgo, et ibi non hospi- 
tetur nisi una nocte nisi ibi intirmetur, 
vel equus ejus, ita quod monstrare possit 
monstrabile essouium. 

16. Et si ibi fuerit plusquam una nocte, 
capiatur ille et teneatur donee dominus 
ejus venerit ad eam plegiandum, vel donee 
ipse habeat salvos plegios; et ille similiter 
capiatur qui hospitatus fuerit. 

17. Et si aliquis vicecomes mandaverit 
alii vicecomiti quod homines fugerint de 
comitatu suo in alium comilatum pro 
roberia vel pro murdro vel latrocinio vel 
receptione eorum, vel pro utlagia vel pro 
retta forestae regis, ille capiat eos : et 
etiam si per se vel per alios sciat quod ta- 
les homines fugerint in eomitatum suum, 
capiat eos et custodial donee deeis habeat 
salvos plegios. 

18. Kt omnes vicecomites faciant inbre- 
viari omnes fugitivos, qui fugerint de suis 
comitatibus; et hoc faciant coram comi- 
tatibus, et illoruni nomina scripta porta- 
bunt ante .lustitias cum primo ad illos 
venerint, ut illi quaerantur per totam An- 
gliam, et eorum catalla capiantur ad opus 
regis. 

19. Et vult dominus rex quod ex quo 
vicecomites susceperint summonitiones 
Justitiarura errantium, ut ipsi cum comi- 
tatibus suis sint ante illos, ipsi congrega- 
bunt comitatus suos et inquirent omnes 
qui de novo venerint in suos comitatus 
post banc assisani ; et illos mittent per 
plegios, quod erunt coram Justitias, vel 
illos custodient, donee Justitiae ad eos 
venerint, et tunc habebunt coram Justi- 
tias. 

20. Prohibet etiam dominus rex ne mo- 
nachi vel canonici vel aliqua domus religi- 
onum reeipiant alicjueni de pojjulo minuto 
in monachiim vel oanonicum vel fratrem, 
donee sciatur de quali testimonio ipse fue- 
rit, nisi ipse fuerit iulirmus ad mortem. 

21. Prohibet etiam dominus rex, quod 
nullus in tola .\nglia recei)tet in terra sua 
vel soca sua vel domo sub se, aliquem de 
secta illoruni renegatorum qui excommu- 
nicati et signal i fuerunt apud Oxeneforde. 
Rt si quis eos receperit, ipseerit inmiseri- 
cordia domini regis; et domus, in qua illi 
fuerint portetur extra villam et combura- 
tur. Et hoc junibit unus(|uisque viceco- 
mes quod hoc tenebit, et hoc jurare faciet 
omnes ministros suos, et dapiferos baro- 
num, et omnes milites et franco tenentes 
de comitatibus. 

22. Et vult dominus rex quod haec assisa 
teneatur in regno suo (juamdiu ei placuerit. 
— (" M. S. Bodl. Kawlinson," C. 641.) 



IV. MAONA OHARTA. 

Johannes He! gratia rex Angliae, do- 
minus Hyberniae, dux Normanniae et 
A(|nitanniae, comes Andegaviae, archie- 
piscopis, e))iscopis, abbatibus, eomitibus, 
baronibus, justiciariis, forestariis, viceco- 
mitibus, praepositis, miuistris et omnibus 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



545 



ballivis et fldelibus suis salutem. Sciatis 
nos intuitu Dei et pro salute auiiiiae uos- 
trae et oiiiuium antecessorum et haereduin 
nostrorum, ad lionorem Dei et exaltatio- 
uem sanctae ecclesiae, et emendationem 
regiii nostri, per concilium venerabilium 
patrum nostrorum, Stephaiii Oantuarien- 
sis archiepiscopi totius Angliae priuiatis 
et sanctae Komanae ecclesiae eardinalis, 
Henrici Dublinensis arcliiepisc<i|ji, Wil- 
lelmi Loiidoniensis, I'etri Wiiitoiiiensis, 
.loscelini Bathoniensis et Glastonieiisi, 
Hugonis Lincolniensis, Walteri Wygorn- 
ensis, VVillelmi Coventrensis, et Benedict! 
Kottensis episcoporum ; magistrl I'andulfi 
domini papae subdiaconi et familiaris, 
tratris Eymerici magistri militiae tenipli 
in Anglia; et nobilium virorum Willelmi 
Mariscalli comitis rcinbrok, Willelmi co- 
initis Saresberiae, Willehni comitis Wa- 
reuniae, Willelmi comitis Arundelliae, 
Alani de Galweya constabularii Scottiae, 
Warini filii Geroldi, I'etri tilii Horeberti, 
Huberti de Burgo senescalli Pictaviae, 
Hugonis de Nevilla, Mathei filii Hereberti, 
Tliomae Basset, Alani Basset, Thilippl de 
Albiniaco, Robert! de Koppelay, Joluinnis 
Mariscalli, Johannis filii Hugonis et alio- 
rum tidelium nostrorum : 

1. In primisconcessisse Deo et hac prae- 
senti carta nostra contirmasse, pro nobis 
et baeredibus nostris in perpetuum, quod 
Anglicana ecclesia libera sit, et liabeat 
jura sua Integra, et libertates suas illaesas; 
et ita volumus observari; quod apparet ex 
eo quod libertatem electionum, quae maxi- 
ma et niagis necessaria reputatur ecclesiae 
Anglicanae, mera et spontanea voluutate, 
ante discordiam inter nos et barones nos- 
tros raotam, concessimus et carta nostra 
confirmavinms, et earn optinuimus a do- 
mino papa Innoceiitio tertio contirmari; 
<iuam et nos observabimus et ab baere- 
dibus nostris in perpetuum bona tide 
volumus observari. Concessimus etLam 
omnibus liberis liominibus regni nostri, 
pro nobis et baeredibus nostris in perpe- 
tuum, omnes libertates subscriptas, liaben- 
das et tenendas, eis et baeredibus suis, de 
nobis et baeredibus nostris; 

^. Si quis comitum vel baronum nostro- 
rum, sive aliorum tenentium de nobis in 
capite per servitium militare, mortuus fue- 
rit, et cum decesserit liaeres suus plenae 
aetatis fuerit et relevium debeat, babeat 
haereditatem suam per antiquum relevi- 
um; scilicet baeres vel haeredes comitis, 
de baronia comitis Integra per centum 
libras ; liaeres vel haeredes baronis, de 
baronia Integra per centum libras; baeres 
vel baeredes militis, de feodo militis in- 
tegro per centum solidos ad plus ; et qui 
minus debuerit minus det secundum anti- 
(juam consuetudinem feodorum. 

3. Si autem baeres alicujus talium fuerit 
infra aetatem et fuerit in custodia, cum ad 
aetatem pervenerit, babeat haereditatem 
suam sine relevio et sine fine. 

4. Gustos terrae hujusmodi baeredis qui 
infra aetatem fuerit, non capiat de terra 



baeredis nisi rationabiles exitus, et ra- 
tiouabiles consuetudines, et rationabilia 
servitia, et hoc sine destructione et vasto 
hominum vel rerum; et si nos commiseri- 
nms custodiam alicujus talis terrae vice- 
comiti vel alicui alii qui de exitibus, illius 
nobis respondere debeat, et ille destruc- 
tionem de custodia feceritvel vastum,nos 
all illd capienms emendam, et terra com- 
niittatur duobus legalibus et discretis 
liominibus de feodo illo, qui de exitibus 
respondeant nobis vel ei cui eos assigna- 
veriiiius; et si dederimus vel vendiderimus 
alicui costodiam alicujus talis terrae, et 
ille destructionem inde fecerit vel vastum 
amittat ipsam custodiam et tradatur duo- 
bus legalibus et discretis liominibus de 
feodo illo qui similiter nobis respondeant 
sicut praedictum est. 

5. Gustos autem, quamdiu custodiam 
terrae habuerit, sustentet domos, parcos, 
vivaria, stagna, molendina, et cetera ad 
teream illani pertinentia, de exitibus ter- 
rae etusdem; et reddat haeredi, cum ad 
plenam aetatem pervenerit, terrain sua.m 
totam instauratam de carrucis et waiii- 
nagiis secundum quod tempus vvainnagii 
exiget et exitus terrae rationabiliter pote- 
runt sustinere. 

6. Haeiedcs maritentur absque dispara- 
gatione, ita tamcii (juod, aiiteciiiain contra- 
hatur niatriiuonium, ostcndatur proiiin- 
quis de consanguinitati' ipsiiis baeredis. 

7. Vidua post mortem mariti siii statim 
et sine ditficultate babeat niaritagium et 
haereditatem suam, nee aliquid det pro 
dote sua, vel pro maritagio suo, vel haere- 
ditate sua quam haereditatem maritus 
suus et ipsa tenuerint die obitus ipsius 
mariti, et maneat in domo mariti sui per 
quadragintadies post mortem ipsius infra 
quos assignetur ei dos sua. 

8. Nulla vidua distringatur ad se mari- 
tandum dum voluerit vivere sine marito, 
ita tamen quod securitatem faciat (piod se 
non maritabit sine assensu nostro, si de 
nobis tenuerit, vel sine assensu domini 
sui de quo tenuerit, si de alio tenuerit. 

9. Nee nos nee ballivi nostri seisieiiiiis 
ferram uliquam nee redditum pro deliito 
aliquo.iiuauuliu catalla dehitoris sultieiunt 
ab debitum reddendum nee pleggii i|isiiis 
debitoris distriiigaiitur quanidiu ijise capi- 
talis debitor sulHcit ad solutiouem debit i : 
et sicapitalis debitor defecerit in soliitimie 
debiti, non habens unde solvat, pleggii 
respondeant de debito; et, si voluerint, 
habeant terras et redditus debitoris donee 
sit eis satisfactuin de debito (luod ante pro 
eo solverint, nisi capitalis debitor mon- 
straverit se esse quietum inde versus eos- 
dein pleggios. 

10. Si quis mutuo ceperit aliquid a Ju- 
daeis, plus vel minus, et moriatur ante- 
quam debitum ilium solvatur,debitum non 
usuret quamdiu liaeres fuerit infra aeta- 
tem, de quocumque teneat; et si debitum 
illud inciderit in manus nostrils, nos non 
capiemus nisi catallum contentum in 
carta. 



546 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



11. Et si quis moriatiir, et debitum de- 
beat Judaeis, uxor ejus habeat dotem 
suain, et nihil reddat de debito illo; et si 
liberi ipsius defuucti qui fueriut infra 
aetateiii reiiianseriiit, piovideautur eis ne- 
cessaria secundum tenenientuni quod fue- 
rit defuncli.et de residue solvaturdebitum, 
salvo servitio dominoruni; siniili luodo 
fiat de debitis quae debeutur aliis quam 
Judaeis. 

12. Nullum scutagium vel auxilium po- 
natur in regno nostro, nisi per commune 
consilium regni nostri, nisi ad corpus nos- 
trum redimendum, et primogenitum tilium 
nostrum niilitera faciendum, et ad tiliara 
nostram priniogenitani seniel maritandam, 
et ad haec non tiat nisi rationabile auxili- 
um : simili modo fiat de auxiliis de civi- 
tate Londoniarum. 

1.3. Et ci vitas Londoniarum habeat om- 
nes antiquas libertates et liberas consue- 
tudines suas, tam per terras, quam per 
aquas. Praeterea volumus et concedinms 
quod omnes aliae civitates, et burgi, et 
villae, et portus, habeant omnes libertates 
et liberas consuetudines suas. 

14. Et ad habendum commune consilium 
regni, de auxilio assidendo aliter quam in 
tribus casibus praedictis, vel de scutagio 
assidendo, summoneri faciemus archie- 
piscopos, episcopos, abbates, comites, et 
niajores barones, sigillutim per litteras 
nostras; et praeterea faciemus summoneri 
in generali, per viceconiites et ballivos 
nostros, omnes illos qui de nobis tenent 
in capite; ad certum diem, scilicet ad ter- 
minuni quadrnginta dierum ad minus, et 
ad certum locum; et in omnibus litteris 
illius summonitionis causam summoniti- 
ouis exprimemus; et sic facta summoni- 
tione negotium ad diem assignatiim pro- 
cedat secundum consilium illorum qui 
praescntes fueiint, quanivis non omnes 
suminoniti venerint. 

15. Nos non concedemus de cetero alicui 
quod capiat auxilium de liberis liomini- 
bus suis, nisi ad corpus suiim redimendum, 
et ad faciendum primogenitum tilium 
sunm militeni, i-t ad primogenitaui Kliam 
suain seiuel maritandam, et a<i haec non 
tiat nisi rati<)nal>lle auxilium. 

10. Nullus distringatur ad faciendum 
inajus servitium de feodo militis, nee de 
alio libero tenemento, (jtlam inde debetur. 

17. Communia placita non seijuantur 
curiam nostram sed teneantur in aliquo 
loco certo. 

18. Recognitiones de nova dissaisina, de 
morte antecessoris, et de ultima praesen- 
tatione, non capiantnr nisi in suis comi- 
tatiljus et hoc modo; nos, vel si extra 
rcgnnm fuerimus, capitalis justiciarius 
lioster, mitteinus duos justiciarios per 
unumquemque comitatum per qiiatuor 
vices in anno, qui, cum quatuor militibus 
cnjusllbet ooinitatus electis per comita- 
tum, capiaiit in comitatu et in die et loco 
comitatus assisas praedictas. 

ly. Et si in die comitatus assisae prae- 
dictae capi non possint, tot milites et 



libere tenentes remaneant de illis qui in- 
terfuerint comitatui die illo, per quos pos- 
sint judicia sufficienter fieri, secundum 
quod negotium fuerit majus vel minus. 

20. Liber homo non amercietur ])ro 
parvo delicto, nisi secundum modum tle- 
licti; et pro magno delicto amercietur 
secundum magnitudinem delicti, salvo 
conteuemeuto suo; et mercator eodem 
modo salva mercandisa sua; et villanus 
eodem modo amercietur salvo wainnagio 
suo, si inciderint in misericordiam nos- 
tram; et nulla praedictarum misericordi- 
arum ponatur, nisi per sacramentum pro- 
borum hominum de visneto. 

21. Comites et barones non amercientur 
nisi per pares suos, et non nisi secundum 
modum delicti. 

22. Nullus clericus amercietur de laico 
tenemento suo, nisi secundum modum 
aliorum praedictorum, et non secundum 
quantitatem beneficii sui ecchsiastici. 

23. Nee villa nee homo distringatur 
facere pontes ad riparias, nisi qui ab anti- 
quo et de jure facere debent. 

24. Nullus vicecomes, constabularius, 
coronatores. vel alii ballivi nostri, teneaut 
placita eoronae nostrae. 

25. Omnes comitatus, hundredi, wapen- 
takii, et trethingii siiit ad antiquas tirmas 
absque ullo incremento, exceptis domiui- 
cis maneriis nostris. 

26. .Si aliquis tenens de nobis laicum 
feodum moriatur,et vicecomes vel ballivUs 
noster ostendat litteras nostras patentes 
de summonitione nostra de debito quod 
defuiictus nobis debuit, liceat viceconiiti 
vel ballivo nostro attachiare et inbreviare 
catalla defuncti inventa in laico feodo, ad 
vaU iiliaiM illius debiti, per visum legalium 
lioMiinum, ita tamen quod nihil inde amo- 
veatur, donee persolvatur nobis debitum 
quod clariim fuerit; et residuum relinqmu 
fur executoribus ad faciendum testanien- 
tum defuncti; et, si nihil nobis debeatur 
ab ipso, onmia catalla cedaiit defuncto, 
salvis uxori ipsius etpueris rationabilibus 
partibus suis. 

27. Si aliquis liber homo intestatus de- 
cesserit, catalla sua per manus |)ropinquo- 
rum i)arentiim et amicoruin suoriim, per 
visum ecclc^iiae di.-^tribuantnr, salvis uni- 
cuique debitis quae defnnclus ei debebat. 

28. Nullus constabularius, vel alius bal- 
livus noster, capiat blada vel alia catalla 
alicujus, nisi statim inde reddat denai ios, 
aut respectum inde liabere possit de voluu- 
tate venditoris. 

29. Nullus constabtdarius distringat ali- 
quem militem ad <landum denarios pro 
custodiacastri,si facere vol ueritcustodiam 
illam in propria persona sua, vel per alium 
probum hominem, si ijise eam facere non 
possit propter rationabilem causam; et si 
nos duxerimus vel miscrimus eum in ex- 
ercitum, erit quietus de custodia, secun- 
dum quantitatem temporis quo per nos 
fuerit in exercitu. 

30. Nullus vicecomes, vel ballivus nos- 
ter, vel aliquis alius, capiat equos vel ca- 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



547 



reta alicujus liberi hominis pro cariagio 
facieudo, nisi de voluntate iijsius liberi 
hominis. 

31. Xec nos nee ballivi uostri capienius 
alienuiQ boscuin ad t-.astra, vel alia agenda 
nostra, nisi per voluntateni Ipsius cujus 
boscus ille fuerit. 

'.i2. Nos non tenebimus terras illoruni 
qui convicti fuerint de felonia, nisi per 
unum annum et unum diem, et tunc red- 
dantur terrae domiuis feodorura. 

33. Onines kydelli de cetero deponantur 
penitus de Tliamisia, et de Medewaye, et 
per totam Angliam, nisi per costeram 
mans. 

.34. JJreve quod vocatur Praecipe de ce- 
tero non liat alicu de aliquo teneniento 
unde liber homo amittere possit curiam 
suam. 

35. Una mensura vini sit per totum reg- 
num nostrum, et una mensura cervisiae, 
et una mensura bladi scilicet quarterium 
Londoniense, et una latitude pannorum 
tinctorura, et russettorum, et halbergetto- 
rum, scilicet duae ulnae infra listas : de 
ponderibus autem sit ut de mensuris. 

36. Nihil detua vel capiatur de cetero 
pro brevi inquisitionis de vita vel mem- 
bris, sed gratis concedatur et non negetur. 

37. 8i aliquis teneat de nobis per feodi- 
firmam, vel per sokagium, vel per burga- 
gium, et de alio terram teneat per servi'ti- 
um militare,nos non habebimuscustodiam 
haeredis nee terrae suae quae est de feodo 
alterius, occasione illius feoditirmae, vel 
sokagii, vel burgagii; nee habebimus cus- 
todiam illius feoditirmae, vel sokagii, vel 
burgagii, nisi ipsa feodifirma debeat servi- 
tium militare. Nos non habebimus custo- 
diani haeredis vel terrae alicujus, quam 
tenet de alio per servitium militare, occa- 
sione alicujus parvae sergenteriae quam 
tenet de nobis per servitium reddendi 
nobis cultellos, vel sagittas, vel liujus- 
modi. 

3s. Nullus ballivus ponat de cetero ali- 
quem ad legem simplici loquela sua, sine 
testibus Hdelibus ad hoc inductis. 

3li. Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel im- 
prisonetur, aut dissaisiatur, aut utlagetur, 
aut e.vuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, 
nee super eum ibimus, nee super eum mit- 
tenius, nisi per legale judicium parium 
suorum, vel per legem terrae. 

40. Nulli vendemus, nulli negabiraus, 
aut dilieremus, rectum aut justiciam. 

41. Omnes mercatores habeant salvum 
et securum exire de Anglia, et venire in 
Angliam, et niorari et ire per Angliam, 
tarn per terram quam per aquam, ad 
emendum et vendendum, sine omnibus 
malls toltis, per antiquas et rectas consue- 
tudines, praeterquam in tempore gwerrae, 
et si slut de terra contra nos gwerrina; et 
si tales inveniantur in terra nostra in prin- 
cipio gwerrae, attachientur sine danipiio 
corporum et rerum, donee sciatur a nobis 
vel capitali justiciario nostro, quomodo 
mercatores terrae nostrae tractentur, qui 
tuncinvenientur in terra contra nos gwer- 



rina; et si nostri salvi sint ibi, alii salvi 
sint in terra nostra. 

■i'-l. Lieeat unicuique de cetero exire de 
regno nostro, et redire, salvo et secure, per 
terram et per aquam, salva tide nostra, nisi 
tempore gwerrae per ali(iu()d breve tem- 
pus, propter comniuneni utilitatem regni, 
exceptis imprisouatis et uMagatis secun- 
dum legem regni, et genie de terra contra 
nos gwerrina, et mercatoribus de quibus 
tiat sicut praedictum est. 

43. Si quis tenuerlt de aliqua escaeta, 
sicut de honore Walingeford, Notingeham, 
Bononiae, Lainkastriae, vel de aliis eskae- 
tis, quae sunt in manu nostra, et sunt ba- 
roniae, et obierit, haeres ejus non det aliud 
relevium, nee faciat nobis aliud servitium 
quam faceret baroni si baronia ilia esset 
in manu baronis; et nos eodcm modo earn 
tenebimus quo baro eam tenuit 

44. Homines qui manent e.\tra forestam 
non veniant de cetero coram justiciariis 
nostris de foresta per communes suniino- 
nitiones, nisi sint in placito, vel pleggu 
dicujus vel aliquorum, qui attachiati sint 

pro foresta. 

45. Nos non faciemus justiciaries, con- 
stabularios, vicecomites, vel ballivos, nisi 
de talibus qui sciant legem regni et eam 
bene velint observare. 

46. Omnes barones qui fundaverunt ab 
batias, unde liabent cartas regum Angliae, 
vel antiquam tenuram, habeant earum 
eustodiam cum vacaverint, sicut habere 
debent. 

47. Onines forestae quae aforestatae sunt 
tempore nostro, statim deatlorestentur; et 
ita tiat de ripariis quae per nos tempore 
nostro positae sunt in defenso. 

48. Omnes malae eonsuetudines de fo- 
restis et warennis, et de forestariis et 
warennariis, vicecomitibus et eorum mini- 
stris, ripariis et earum custodibus, statim 
inquirantur in quolibet coniitatu per duo- 
deeim milites juratos de eodem comitatu, 
qui debent eligi per probos liomines ejus- 
dem comitatus, et infra quadraginta dies 
post inquisitionem factam, jienitus, ita 
quod nunquam revocentur, deleantur per 
eosdem, ita quod nos hoe sciamus prius, 
vel justiciarius noster, si in Anglia non 
fuerimus. 

49. Omnes obsides et cartas statim red- 
demus quae liberal ae fuerunt nobis ab 
Anglicis in securitatem pacis vel fidelis 
servitii. 

50. Nos amovebimus penitus de balliis 
parentes Gerardi de Athyes, quod de cetero 
nullam habeant balliam'in Anglia; Enge- 
lardum de Cygoniis, Andream, Petrum et 
(iyonem de Cancellis, Gyonem de Cygo- 
niis. Galfridum de Martyhi et fratresejus, 
Philippum Hark et fratres ejus, et Galfri- 
dum nepotem ejus, et totam sequelam 
oorumdem. 

51. Et statim post pacis reformationem 
amovebimus de regno omnes alienigenas 
milites, balistarios, servientes, stipendia- 
rios, qui venerint eum equis et armis ad 
nocumentum regni. 



548 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



62. Si quis fuerit disseisitus vel elon- 
gatus per iios sine legali juclicio parium 
suoruiii, de terris, castallls, libertatibus, 
vel jure suo, statiin ea ei restiiiiemus; et 
si coiitentio super hoc orta tuerit, tunc 
inde tiat per judicium viginti quinque ba- 
ronuni, de quibus tit mentio iulerius in se- 
curitate pacis : de onmibus auteui illis de 
quibus aliquis disseisitus fuerit vel elonga- 
tus sine legali judicio parium suoruni, per 
Henricum regem patrem nostrum vel per 
Kicardumregem fratrem nostrum, quae in 
munu nostra liabenius, vel quae alii tenant, 
quae nos oporteat warantizare, respectum 
liabebimus usque adcomraunem terminum 
crucesiguatorum; exceptis illis de quibus 
placitum motuni fuit vel inquisitio facta 
per praeceptum nostrum, ante susceptio- 
nein crucis nostrae : cum autem redieri- 
nms de peregrinatione nostra, vel si I'orte 
remanserimus a peregrinatione nostra, sta- 
tim inde plenam justiciam exhibebimus. 

53. Eundeni autem respectum liabebi- 
mus, ei eodem modo, de justicia exliiben- 
dadeforestis deall'orestandis vel remansu- 
ris forestis, quas Henricus pater noster vel 
Kicardus frater noster atl'orestaverunt, et 
de custodiis terrarum quae sunt de alieno 
feodo, cujusmodi custodias hucusque lia- 
buimus occasione feodi quod aliquis de 
nobis tenuit per servitium militare, et de 
abbatiis quae fundatae fuerint in feodo 
alterius quam nostro, in quibus doniinus 
feodi dixerit se jus habere; etcuin redieri- 
mus, vel si remanserimus a peregrinatione 
nostra, super hiis conquerentibus plenam 
justiciam statim exhibebimus, 

54. NuUus capiat ur nee imprisonetur 
proiiter appellum foeminae de niorte alte- 
rius quam viri sui. 

55."Omnes fines qui injuste et contra 
legem terrae facti sunt nobiscum. et omnia 
amerciamenta facta injuste et contra le- 
gem terrae, omnino condonentur, vel fiat 
inde per judicium viginti (juin(iue barouum 
de quibus fit mentio inferius in securitate 
pacis, vel per judicium majoris partis 
eorumdem, una cum praedicto Stepliano 
CantuariensI archieplscoiio, si interesse 
potcrit, et aliis quos secum ad hoc vocare 
voluerit; et si interesse non poterit, nihi- 
lominus proc(>dat negotium sine eo, ita 
quod, si aliquis vel aliqui de praedictis 
viginti quinque baioiiihus fuerint in si- 
mili ({uerela, amoveantur quantum ad hoc 
judicium, et alii loco illorum per residuos 
de eisdem viginti (iuin<iue, tantum ad hoc 
faciendum elictiet jurati substituantur. 

5(). Si nos (lissaisivinius vel elongavimus 
Waltmses de terris vel libertatibus vel 
rebus aliis, sine legali judicio parium 
suorum, in Anglia velin Wallia, eis statim 
reddantur; et si coiitentio super lioc orta 
fuerit, tunc inde fiat in marcliia j)er judi 
cium parium suorum, de tenemeutis An- 
gliae secundum legem Angliae, de tene- 
meutis Walliae secundum legem Walliae, 
de tenemeutis marchiae secundum legem 
marchiae. Idem facient Walenses nobis 
ct Qostris. 



57. De omnibus autem illis de quibus 
aliquis Waliiisium dissaisitus fuerit vel 
elongatus sine legali judicio parium suo- 
rum, per Heniicum regem patrem nostrum 
vel Uicardum regem fratrem nostrum, 
quae nos in manu nostra habemus, vel 
quae alii tenent <iuae nos oporteat waran- 
tizare, respectum habebinms usque ad 
comnmneni terminum crucesignatorum, 
illis exceptis de quibus placitum motum 
fuit vel inquisitio facta per praeceptum 
nostrum ante susceptionem crucis nostrae : 
cum autem redierinms, vel si forte reman- 
serimus a peregrinatione nostra, statim 
eis inde plenam justiciam exhibebinms, 
secundem leges \V alensium et partes prae- 
dictas. 

58. Nos reddemusiilium Ijewelini statim, 
et omnes obsides de Wallia, et cartas quae 
nobis liberatae fuerunt in securitatem 
pacis. 

59. Nos facienius Allexandro regi Scot- 
torum de sororibus suis, et obsidibus red- 
dendis, et libertatibus suis, et jure suo, 
secundum formam in qua facienius aliis 
baronibus nosiris Angliae, nisi alifer esse 
debeat per cartas quas habemus de Willel- 
mo patre ipsius, quondam rege Scottorum ; 
et hoc erit per judicium parium suorum in 
curia nostra. 

(iO. Omnes autem istas consuetudines 
praedictas et libertates quas nos concessi- 
mus in regno nostro tenendas quantum ad 
nos pertineterga nostros, omnes de regno 
nostro, tarn derici quam laid, observent 
(juantum ad se pertinet erga suos. 

61. Cum autem pro Deo, et ad emenda- 
tionem regni nostri, et ad melius sopien- 
endum discordiam inter nos et barones 
nostros ortam, haec omnia praedicta con- 
cesserinms, volentes ea Integra et firma 
stabilitate gaudere in perpetuum, faciemus 
et concedimus eis secuiitatem subscrip- 
tam; videlicet quod barones eligant viginti 
quin(iue barones de regno quos voluerint, 
qui debeant pro totis viiibus suis obser- 
vare, tenere, et facere observari, pacem et 
libertates quas eis cone essinius, et hac 
praesenti carta nostra contiiinavimus, ita 
scilicet quod, si nos, vel justiciarius noster, 
vel ballivi nostri, vel aliquis de minislris 
nostris, in aliquo erga alicjuem deliqu< ri- 
mus, vel aliquem ai'ticulorum pacis aut 
securitatis transgress! fuerimus, et delic- 
tum ostensuiii fuerit quatuor baronibus de 
praedictis viginti quinque baronibus, illi 
(juatuor barones accedant ad nos vel ad jus- 
ticiarium nostrum, si fueriinus extra reg- 
nuni, proponentes nobis excessum : petent 
ut excessum ilium sine dilatione faciamus 
emendari. Et si nos excessum non enien- 
daveriiiius, vel, si fuerimus extra regnum, 
justici:irius noster non emendaverit infra 
tempiis quadraginta dierum coiuputan- 
duni a tempore quo monstratum fuerit no- 
bis vel justiciario nostro si extra regnum 
fueriinus, praedicti quatuor barones refe- 
ratit causani illam ad residuos de viginti 
quiuque baronibus, et illi viginti quinque 
barones cum communa totius terrae dis- 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



549 



tringent et gravabunt iios raodis omnibus 
quibuspoteruiit, scilicet per captioiienicas- 
troriim, terraruni, posscssiouuiii, et aliis 
modis quibus poteruut, donee fiierit emen- 
datiini secundum aibitriuni eorum, salva 
persona nostra et reginae nostrae et libe- 
rorum nostrorum; et cum fuerit emenda- 
tum intendeut nobis sicut prius fecerunt. 
Et quicunique voluerit de tiira jiuet (piod 
ad praedicta omnia exsei|iieiida panbit 
niandatis praedictorum viyiuti ipiincjue ba- 
ronum.etquod gravabit nos pro posse suo 
cum ipsis, et nos publico et libere damus 
licentiani jurandi cuilibet qui jnrare volu- 
erit, et nulli umquani jurare proliibebiuiiis. 
(Jinnes aiiteni illos ile terra qui j)er se et 
sponte sua nolueriut jurare vigiiiti qiiiiKpie 
barouibu^, de distringendo et gravundo 
nos cum eis, faciemus jurare eosdeni <le 
mandato nostro, sicut praedictum est. Et 
si aliquis de viginti quinque baronibus de- 
cesserit, vel a terra recesserit, vel ali<|UO 
alio inodo impeditus fuerit, quo minus ista 
Iirai'dicta possent exsequi, qui resiilui fue- 
rint dc praedictis viginti quinque baroni- 
bus eligant aliuni loco ipsius, pro arbitrio 
suo, qui siniili modo erit juratus quo et 
ceteri. In omnibus autem quae istis vi- 
ginti quinque baronibus cominittuutur 
exsequenda, si forte ipsi viginti quinque 
praesentes fueriut, et inter se super re ali- 
qua discordaverint, vel aliqui ex eis sum- 
moniti nolint vel nequeant interesse, ra- 
tum liabeatur et linuiim quod major pars 
eorum (jui praesentes fuerint ])roviderit, 
velpraeceperit, ac si oinues viginti (luiiique 
in hoc consensissent ; et praedicti viginti 
ijuinque jurentquod omnia antedicta tide- 
liier observabunt, et pro toto posse suo 
facient observari. Et nos nihil impetra- 
bimus ab aliquo, per nos nee per alium, 
per quod allqua ist'irum concessionum et 
libertatum revocetur vel minuatur; et, si 
aliquid tale iinpetratum fuerit, irritum sit 
et inane et numquam eo utemur per nos 
nee per alium. 

62. Et omnes malas voluntates, indig- 
nationes, et rancores, ortos inter nos et 
homines nostros, clerieos et laieos, a tem- 
pore discordiae, plene omnibus remisimus 
et condonavimus. Praeterea omnes trans- 
gressiones factas occasione ejusdem dis- 
cordiae, a Pascha anno regui uostri sexto- 
decimo usque ad pacem reformatam, i)lene 
remisimus omnibus, clericis et laicis, et 
quantum ad nos pertinet plene condonavi- 
mus. I'U insuper fecimus eis fieri liKeras 
testimoniales patentes domini Stcphani 
Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, diiniini Hcn- 
rici Dublinensis archiepiscopi, et episco- 
porum praedictorum, etnnigistri Pandiilli, 
super securitate ista et cencessionibus 
praefatis. 

03. Quare volumus et firmiter praeciiii- 
mus quod Anglicana ecclesia libera sit et 
quod homines in regno nostro habeant et 
teneant omnes praelata-; libertates, jura, 
et coneessiones, bene et in jiaee, libere el 
quiete, plene et Integra, sibi et liaeredibus 
Buis, de noM; et haeredibus nostris, in 



omnibus rebus et locis, in perpetuum, sicut 
praedictum est. Juratuni est autem tam 
ex parte nostra quam ex parte baronum ; 
quod haec omnia supradicta bona fide et 
sine nialo ingenio observabuntur. 'I'esti- 
bus supradictis et multis aliis. Data jjer 
nianuni uostram in prato quod vocalur 
Kuningmede, inter Windelesorum et 
Stanes, quinto decimo die Junii, anno 
regui uostri septimo decimo. 

V. CONFIRMATION OK TIIIC C'lIAllTKKS. 

{Ti-anslatioH.) 

I. Edward, by the grace of God, King of 
England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of 
Guyan, to ^dl those that these present let- 
ters shall hear or see, greeting. Know ye 
that we to the honor of God and of holy 
Church, and to the profit of our realm, 
have granted for us and our heirs, that the 
Charter of Liberties and the Charier of the 
Forest, which were made by common as- 
sent of all the realm, in the time of King 
Henry our father, shall be kejit in every 
point without breach. And we will that 
the same charters shall be sent under our 
seal as well to our justices of the forest as 
to others, and to all sheriffs of shires, and 
to all ourotlier officers, and to all our cities 
throughout the realm, together with our 
writs in the which it shall be contained, 
that they cause the foresaid charters to he 
published, and to declare to the peo|>le 
that we have confirmed them in all poiids, 
and that our justices, sheriffs, mayors, and 
other ministers which under us have the 
laws of our land to guiile, shall allow the 
said charters pleaded before them in jiulg- 
ment in all their points ; that is, to wit, the 
Great Charter as the common law and the 
(Charter of the lorest according to the As- 
size of the Forest, for the wealth of our 
realm. 

II. And we will that if any judgment be 
given from henceforth, contrary to the 
points of the charters aforesaid, by the 
justices or by any other our ministers 
that hold plea before them against the 
points of the charters, it shall be undone 
and liolden for naught. 

III. And we will that the same charters 
shall be sent under our seal to cathedral 
churches throughout our realm, there to 
remain, and shall be read before the peo- 
ple two times by the year. 

IV. And that all archbishops and bishops 
shall pronounce the sentence of great ex- 
ccnnmnnication against all those that by 
wold, or deed, or counsel, do contrary to 
the foresaid charters, or that in any point 
break or undo them. And tliat the said 
curses be f wiee a vear denounced and pub- 
lished by the prelates aforesjiid. And if 
the same prelates or any of them be remiss 
in the denunciation of the said sentences, 
the Archbishoi)S of Canterbury and York 
for the time being, as is fitting, shall com- 
pel and distrain them to make tliat denun- 
ciation in form aforesaid. 



550 



NOTES ON CHAPTER VIII. 



V. And for so much as divers people of 
our realm are in fear that the aids and 
tasks which they have given to us before- 
time towards our wars and other business, 
of their own grant and good-will, howso- 
ever they were made, might turn to a bond- 
age to them and their heirs, because they 
miglit be at another time found in the 
rolls, and so likewise the prizes taken 
throiigliout the reahn by our ministers; 
we have granted for us and our heirs, 
that we shall not draw such aids, tasks, 
nor prizes into a custom, for anything that 
hatli been done heretofore or tliat may be 
found by roll or in any other manner. 

VI. Moreover, we have granted for us 
and our heirs, as well to archbishops, 
bishops, abbots, priors, and other folk of 
holy Church, as also to earls, barons, and 
to all the commonalty of the land, that 
for no business from henceforth will we 
take such mannerof aids, tasks, nor prizes, 
but by the common assent of the realm, and 
for the common profit thereof, saving the 
ancient aids and prizes due and accus- 
tomed. 

Vir. And for so much as the more part 
of the commonalty of the realm find them- 
selves sore grieved with the maletote of 
wools; that is, to wit, a toll of forty shil- 
lings for every sack of wool, and have 
made petition to us to release the same; 
we, at their requests, have clearly released 
it, and have granted for us and our heirs 
that we shall not take such thing nor any 
other without their common assent and 



good-will; saving to us and our heirs the 
custom of wools, skins, and leather grant- 
ed before by the commonalty aforesaid. 
In witness of which things we have caiisid 
these our letters to be made patent. Wit- 
ness Edward our son at London, the 10th 
day of October, the five and twentieth year 
of our reign. 

And be it remembered that this same 
charter in the same terms, word for word, 
was sealed in Flanders under the king's 
great seal, that is to say, at Ghent, the 5th 
day of November, in the 25t1i year of the 
reign of our aforesaid lord the king, and 
sent into England. — (" Statutes of the 
Reahn," i., 124, 125.) 

VI. SUMMONS TO THK PARLIAMENT OF 
1265. 

Item mandatum est singulis vicecomiti- 
bus per Angliam quod venire faciant duos 
milites de legalioribus, probioribus et dis- 
cretioribus militibns sing:ulorum comita- 
tuum ad regem Londoniis in octavis prae- 
dictis in forma supradicta. 

Item in forma praedicta scribiturcivibus 
Eboraci, civibus, Lincolniae, et ceteris bur- 
gis Angliae, quod mittant in forma prae- 
dicta duos de discretioribus, legalioribus 
et probioribus tam civibus quam burgen- 
sibus. 

Item in forma praedict.i mandatum est 
baronibus et probis hominibus Quinque 
rortuum. . . . — (" Report on the Dignity 
of a Peer," App. 1., p. .33.) 



State of Society. INTKODUCTIOJ^". 551 



CHAPTER IX. 

ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE 

AGES. 

PART I. 

§ 1. Introduction. § 2. Decline of Literature in the latter period of the Roman 
Empire. § 3. Its Causes. § 4. Corruption of the Latin Laiijjuage : Means by 
wliicli it was effected. §5. Formation of new I^anguages. § 6. General Ignorance 
of the Darlc Ages. § 7. Causes tliat prevented the total Extinction of Learning. 
§ s. l^revalence of Superstition and Fanaticism. §9. Enthusiastic Risings. §10. 
Pretended Jliracles. § 11. General Corruption of Religion. § 12. Monasteries: 
their ettects. § 13, Penances, Pilgrimages. § 14. Want of law', and Degredation 
of Morals. 15. § Love of Field Sports. § 16. .St.ate of Agriculture. § 17. Of In- 
ternal and Foreign Trade down to the End of the Eleventh Century. § 18. 
Improvement of Europe dated from that Age. 

§ 1. The Middle Ages, according to the division I have 
adopted, comprise about one thousand years, from the invasion 
of France by ChDvis to that of Naples by Charles VIII. This 
period, considered as to the state of society, has been esteemed 
dark through ignorance, and barbarous through poverty and 
want of refinement. And although this character is much less 
applicable to the last two centuries of the period than to those 
which preceded its commencement, yet we cannot expect to 
feel, in respect of ages at best imperfectly civilized and slowly 
progressive, that interest which attends a more perfect develop- 
ment of human capacities, and more brilliant advances in im- 
provement. The first moiety, indeed, of these ten ages is 
almost absolutely barren, and presents little but a catalogue of 
evils. The subversion of the Roman Empire and devastation 
of its provinces by barbarous nations, either immediately pre- 
ceded, or were coincident with, the commencement of the 
middle period. We begin in darkness and calamity ; and 
though the shadows grow fainter as we advance, yet we are to 
break off our pursuit as the morning breathes upon us and the 
twilight reddens into the lustre of day. 

§ 2. No circumstance is so prominent, on the first survey 
of society during the earlier centuries of this period, as the 
depth of ignorance in which it was immersed ; and as from 
this, more than any single cause, the moral and social evils 



552 DECLINE OF LEARNING Chap. IX. Pakt I. 

which those ages experienced appear to have been derived and 
perpetuated, it deserves to occupy the first place in the arrange- 
ment of our present subject. We must not altogether ascribe 
the ruin of literature to the barbarian destroyers of the Roman 
Empire. So gradual and, apparently, so irretrievable a decay 
had long before spread over all liberal studies, that it is im- 
possible to pronounce whether tliey would not have been 
almost equally extinguished if the august throne of the Caisars 
had been left to moulder by its intrinsic weakness. Under 
the paternal sovereignty of Marcus Aurelius the approaching 
declension of learning might be scarcely perceptible to an in- 
curious observer. There was much, indeed, to distinguisli his 
times from those of Augustus ; much lost in originality of 
genius, in correctness of taste, in the masterly conception and 
consummate finish of art, in purity of the Latin, and even of 
the Greek language. But there were men who made the age 
famous ; grave lawyers, judicious historians, wise philoso- 
phers ; the name of learning was honorable, its professors were 
encouraged ; and along the vast surface of the Roman Empire 
there w^as perhaps a greater number whose minds were culti- 
vated by intellectual discipline than under the more brilliant 
reign of the first emperor. 

§ 3. It is not, I think, very easy to give a perfectly satis- 
factory solution of the rapid downfall of literature between 
the ages of Antonine and of Diocletian. Perhaps the prosper- 
ous condition of the empire from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, 
and the patronage which those good princes bestowed on 
letters, gave an artificial health to them for a moment, and 
suspcmded the operation of a disease which had already begun 
to undermine their vigor. Perhaps the intellectual energies of 
mankind can never remain stationary; and a nation that 
ceases to produce original and inventive minds, born to ad- 
vance the landmarks of knowledge or skill, will recede from 
step to step, till it loses even the secondary merits of imita- 
tion and industry. During the third century, not only there 
were no great writers, but even few names of indifferent 
writers, have been recovered by the diligence of modern in- 
(piiry. Law neglected, philosophy perverted till it became 
contemptible, history nearly silent, the Latin tongue growing 
rapidly barbarous, poetry rarely and feebly attempted, art 
more and more vitiated ; such were the symptoms by wdiich 
the age previous to Constantino announced the decline of 
human intellect. If we cannot fully account for this unhappy 
change, as I have observed, we must, however, assign much. 



State of Society. IN THE llOMAN EMPIRE. 553 

weight to the degradation of Rome and Italy in the system of 
Severus and his successors, to the admission of barbarians 
into the military and even civil dignities of the empire, to the 
discouraging influence of provincial and illiterate sovereigns, 
and to the calamities which followed for half a century the 
first invasion of the Goths and the defeat of Decius. To this 
sickly condition of literature the fourth century supplied no 
permanejit remedy. If under the house of Constantine the 
Eoman world suffered rather less from civil warfare or bar- 
barous invasions than in the preceding age, yet every other 
cause of decline just enumerated prevailed with aggravated 
force ; and the fourth century set in storms, sufficiently de- 
structive in themselves, and ominous of those calamities which 
humbled the majesty of Home at the commencement of the 
ensuing period, and overwhelmed the Western Em})ire in 
absolute and final ruin before its termination. 

The diffusion of literature is ])erfectly distinguishable from 
its advancement ; and whatever the obscurity Ave may find in 
explaining the variations of the one, there are a few simple 
causes which seem to account for the other. KnoAvledge will 
be spread over the surface of a nation in proportion to the 
facilities of education ; to the free circulation of books ; to the 
emoluments and distinctions which literary attainments are 
found to produce ; and still more to the reward which they 
meet in the general respect and applause of society. This 
cheering incitement, the genial sunshine of approbation, has 
at all times promoted the cultivation of literature in small 
republics rather than large empires, and in cities compared 
with the country. If these are the sources which nourish 
literature, we should naturally expect that they must have 
become scanty or dry when learning languishes or expires. 
Accordingly, in the later ages of the Eoman Empire a general 
indifference towards the cultivation of letters became the 
characteristic of its inhabitants. Laws were, indeed, enacted 
by Constantine, Julian, Theodosius, and other emperors, for 
tlie encouragement of learned men and the promotion of 
liberal education. But these laws, which would not, perhaps, 
have been thought necessary in better times, were unavailing 
to counteract the lethargy of ignorance in which even the 
native citizens of the empire were contented to repose. This 
alienation of men from their national literature may doubtless 
be imputed in some measure to its own demerits. A jargon of 
mystical philosophy, half fanaticism and half imposture, a 
barren and inflated eloquence, a frivolous philology, were not 



554 DECLINE OF LEARNING Chap. IX. Part I. 

among those charms of Avisdom by which man is to be diverted 
from pleasure or aroused from indolence. 

In this temper of the public mind there was little probability 
that new compositions of excellence would be produced, and 
much doubt whether the old would be preserved. Since the 
invention of printing, the absolute extinction of any consider- 
able work seems a danger too improbable for apprehension. 
The press pours forth in a few days a thousand volumes, 
which, scattered like seeds in the air over the republic of 
Europe, could hardly be destroyed without the extirpation of 
its inhabitants. But in the times of antiquity manuscripts 
were copied with cost, labor, and delay ; and if the diffusion 
of knowledge be measured by the multiplication of books — 
no unfair standard — the most golden ages of ancient learning 
could never bear the least comparison with the three last 
centuries. The destruction of a few libraries by accidental 
lire, the desolation of a few provinces by uns])aring and illit- 
erate barbarians, miglit annihilate every vestige of an author, 
or leave a few scattered copies, which, from the public indif- 
ference, there was no inducement to multiply, exposed to 
similar casualties in succeeding times. 

AVe are warranted by good authorities to assign as a col- 
lateral cause of this irretrievable revolution the neglect of 
heathen literature by the Christian Church. I am not versed 
enough in ecclesiastical writers to estimate the degree of this 
neglect ; nor am I disposed to deny that the mischief was be- 
yond recovery before the accession of Constantine. From the 
primitive ages, however, it seems that a dislike of pagan 
learning was pretty general among Christians. Many of the 
fathers undoubtedly were accomplished in liberal studies, and 
we are indebted to them for valuable fragments of authors 
whom we have lost. But the literary character of the Church 
is not to be measured by that of its more illustrious leaders. 
Proscribed and persecuted, the early Christians had not, 
perhaps, access to the public schools, nor inclination to 
studies which seemed, very excusably, uncongenial to the 
character of their profession. Their prejudices, however, sur- 
vived the establishment of Christianity. The Fourth Council 
of Carthage, in 398, prohibited the reading of secular books by 
bishops, Jerome plainly condemns the study of them except 
for pious ends. All physical science especially was held in 
avowed contempt, as inconsistent with revealed truths. Nor 
do there appi^ar to have been any canons made in favor of 
learning, or any restriction on the ordination of persons 



State OF Society. IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 555 

absolutely illiterate. There was, indeed, abundance of what 
is called theological learning displayed in the controversies 
of the fourth and fifth centuries ; and those who admire such 
disputations may consider the principal champions in them as 
contributing to the glory, or, at least, retarding the decline, of 
literature. But I believe rather that polemical disputes will 
be found not only to corrupt the genuine spirit of religion, but 
to degrade and contract the faculties. What keenness and 
subtlety these may sometimes acquire by such exercise is more 
like that worldly shrewdness we see in men whose trade it is 
to outwit their neighbors than the clear and calm discrimina- 
tion of philosophy. However this may be, it cannot be 
doubted that the controversies agitated in the Church during 
these two centuries must have diverted studious minds from 
profane literature, and narrowed more and more the circle of 
that knowledge which they Avere desirous to attain. 

The torrent of irrational superstitions which carried all 
before it in the fifth century, and the progress of ascetic en- 
thusiasm, had an influence still more decidedly inimical to 
learning. I cannot, indeed, conceive any state of society 
more adverse to the intellectual improvement of mankind than 
one which admitted of no middle line between gross dissolute- 
ness and fanatical mortification. An equable tone of pul)lic 
morals, social and humane, verging neither to voluptuousness 
nor austerity, seems the most adapted to genius, or at least to 
letters, as it is to individual comfort and national prosperity. 
After the introduction of monkery, and its unsocial theory of 
duties, the serious and reflecting part of mankind, on whom 
science most relies, were turned to habits which, in the most 
favorable view, could not quicken the intellectual energies ; 
and it miglit be a difficult question whether the cultivators 
and admirers of useful literature were less likely to be found 
among the profligate citizens of Kome and their barbarian 
conquerors, or the melanclioly recluses of the wilderness. 

Su.ch, therefore, was the state of learning before the sub- 
version of the Western Empire. And we may form some 
notion how little probability there was of its producing any 
excellent fruits, even if that revolution had never occurred, by 
considering Avhat took place in Greece during tlie subsequent 
ages ; where, although there v-^as some attention shown to pre- 
serve the best monuments of antiquity, and diligence in com- 
piling from them, yet no one original writer of any superior 
merit arose, and learning, though plunged but for a short 
period into mere darkness, may be said to have languished in 



556 COKKUPTION OF LATIN. Chap. IX. Takt I. 

the middle region of twilight for the greater part of a thousand 
years. 

But not to delay ourselves in this speculation, the final set- 
tlement of barbarous nations in Gaul, Spain, and Italy con- 
summated the ruin of literature. Their first irruptions were 
uniformly attended with devastation ; and if some of the 
Gothic kings, after their establishment, proved humane and 
civilized sovereigns, yet the nation gloried in its original rude- 
ness, and viewed with no unreasonable disdain arts which had 
neither preserved their cultivators from corruption nor raised 
them from servitude. Theodoric, the most famous of the 
Ostrogoth kings in Italy, could not write his name, and is said 
to have restrained his countrymen from attending those 
schools of learning by which he, or rather perhaps his minis- 
ter, Cassiodorus, endeavored to revive the studies of his Italian 
subjects. Scarcely one of the barbarians, so long as they con- 
tinued unconfused witli the native inhabitants, acipiired the 
slightest tincture of letters ; and tlie praise of equal ignorance 
was soon aspired to and attained by the entire mass of the 
Roman laity. They, however, could hardly have divested 
tliemselves so completely of all acquaintance with even the 
elements of learning, if the language in which books were 
written had not ceased to be their natural dialect. This re- 
markable change in the speech of France, Spain, and Italy, is 
most intimately connected with the extinction of learning ; 
and there is enough of obscurity as well as of interest m the 
subject to deserve some discussion. 

§ 4. It is obvious, on tlie most cursory view of the French 
and Spanish languages, that they, as well as the Italian, are 
derived from one common source, the Latin. That must, 
therefore, have been at some period, and certainly not since 
the establishment of the barbarous nations in S])ain and Gaul, 
substituted in ordinary use for the original dialects of those 
countries which are generally supposed to have been Celtic, 
not essentially differing from those which are spoken in Wales 
and Ireland. Rome, says Augustin, imposed not only her 
yoke, but her language, upon conquered nations. The suc- 
cess of such an attempt is indeed very remarkable. Though 
it is the natural effect of conquest, or even of commercial 
intercourse, to ingraft fresh words and foreign idioms on 
the stock of the original language, yet the entire disuse of the 
latter, and adoption of one radically different, scarcely takes 
place in the lapse of a far longer period than that of the 
Roman dominion in Gaul. Thus, in part of Brittany the 



State of bociETV. ANCIENT LATIN rilONUNCIATION. 557 

people speak a language which has perhaps sustained no es- 
sential alteration from the revolution of two thousand years ; 
and we know how steadily another Celtic dialect has kept its 
ground in Wales, notwithstanding English laws and govern- 
ment and the long line of contiguous frontier which brings 
the natives of that principality into contact with Englishmen. 
Nor did the Romans ever establish their language (I know 
not whether they wished to do so) in this island, as we per- 
ceive by that stul)born British tongue which has survived two 
conquests. 

In Gaul and in Spain, however, they did succeed, as the 
present state of the French and Peninsular huiguages renders 
undeniable, though by gradual changes, and not by a sudden 
and arbitrary innovation. This is neither possible in itself, 
nor agreeable to the testimony of Irenteus, bishop of Lyons at 
the end of the second century, who laments the necessity of 
learning Celtic. But although the inhabitants of these prov- 
inces came at length to make use of Latin so completely as 
their mother tongue that few vestiges of their original Celtic 
could perhaps be discovered in their common s])eech, it does 
not follow that they spoke with the pure pronunciation of 
Italians, far less with that conformity to the written sounds 
which we assume to be essential to the expression of Latin 
words. 

It appears to be taken for granted that the Eomans pro- 
nounced their language as we do at present, so far at least as 
the enunciation of all the consonants, however we may admit 
our deviations from the classical standard in propriety of 
sounds and in measure of time. Yet the example of our own 
language and of French might show us that orthogray)hy may 
become a very inadequate representative of pronunciation. It 
is, indeed, capable of proof that in the purest ages of Latinity 
some variation existed between these two. Those numerous 
changes in spelling which distinguished the same words in the 
poetry of Ennius and of Virgil are best explained by the sup- 
position of their being accommodated to the current pronuncia- 
tion. Harsh combinations of letters, softened down through 
delicacy of ear or rapidity of utterance, gradually lost their 
place in the written language. Thus exfrpf/it and adrorjavit 
assumed a form representing their more liquid sound ; and 
aurtor was latterly spelt atitor, which has been followed in 
French and Italian. Aufor was probably so pronounced at all 
times ; and the orthography was afterwards corrected or cor- 
rupted, whichever we please to say, according to the sound. 



658 COHKUPTION OF Chap. IX. Taut I. 

We have the best authority to assert that the fiual m was very 
faintly pronounced, ratlier, it seems, as a rest and short inter- 
val between two syllables than an articulate letter ; nor, in- 
deed, can we conceive upon what other ground it was subject 
to elision before a vowel in verse, since we cannot suppose 
that the nice ears of Eouie would have submitted to a capri- 
cious rule of poetry for which Greece presented no analogy.^ 

A decisive proof, in my opinion, of the deviation which 
took place, through the ra})idity of ordinary elocution, from 
the strict laws of enunciation, may be found m the metre of 
Terence. His verses, which are absolutely refractory to the 
common laws of prosody, may be readily scanned by the appli- 
cation of this principle.^ 

The licenses mentioned in the note below are in all jiroba- 
bility chiefly collorpiial, and would not have been adopted in 
public harangues, to which the precepts of rhetorical writers 
commonly relate. But if the more elegant language of the 
Romans, since such we must suppose to have been copied by 
Terence for his higher characters, differed so much in ordinary 
discourse from their orthography, it is probable that the vul- 
gar went into much greater deviations. The popular pro- 
nunciation errs generally, we might say perhaps invariably, by 
abbreviation of words, and by liquofyiug (consonants, as is 
natural to the rapidity of colloquial speech.^ It is by their 
knowledge of orthography and etymology that the more 



' Affino radoiti ilia litem, qunf ies ultima est, et vocalom vorhi spqiientis ita enntin- 
pit, lit in <>am traiisirc jjossit, ctiam si sorihitnr, taiiicn iiaruiii expriniitur, iit Multum 
ille. et Qvantiirn ernt : adeo iit ppiie ciijusdam iiova> liteiM' sonum rcddat. Neque 
eniin exiinitur, sed olispuratur. et taiitiun aliqua inter duos vocales velut nota est, ne 
ips;c coeant. — Quintilian, Institut.. 1 ix., c. 4, p. 585, edit. Capperonier. ' 

2 Thus, in the tirst act of the " llcautniitiiuoruinenos," a part selected at random, 
I have found, F. Vowels contracted or drojiped so as 1o shorten the word bv a syllable ; 
in rei, rifi, rlhithiR, ei. soJiiix, earn, iinijis, sitnm, dirifinf:. srvex, vnhtptatem, iUiiis, 
scmel: IT. The proceleusmatic foot, or four shoi't s\ll:ibles, instead of the dnctyl ; 
seen, i., V. .W. 7n, 7fi, SS, 109; seen. ii.. v. .30: TTT. The elision of s in words endin? with 
US or ix short, and sometimes even of the whole svll.ablc, before the next word be.a-in- 
niuff with a vowel; in seen, i., v. 30, SI, OS. 101. 11 fi, 110; seen, ii., v. 2S : IV. The first 
svlhible of ille is repeatedly shortened, and indeed nothin.a' is more usual in Terence 
th.an this license ; whence we niav collect how rindv this word was for abbreviation 
into the French and Italian articles: V. The Inst letter of apiid is cut off, seen. i.. v. 
120; and seen, ii., v. 8: VI. Uodie, is used as n pyrrhichius, in seen, ii., v. 11: VII. 
I.astl V, there is a clear instance of a short syll.nble, the ante|icmiltiniate of impulerim, 
lengthened on account of the accent at the 113th verse of the first scene. 

■' The following passage of Quintilian is an evidence both of the omission of harsh 
or superfluous letters by the best speakers, and of the corrupt nbl)revi:itions usual 
with the worst. " Dilucida vero erit pronuneiatio primuni, si verba tota exegerit, 
quorum pars devorari, pars destitui solet. plerisque extremas sylhibas non profe- 
rentibus, dum priorum sono indulgent. Ut est autem necessaria verborum expla- 
nntio. ita omnes coiuputare et velut adnumerare litems, molestum et odiosum. Nam 
et vocales frequentissime coeunt, et eonsonantium qu.Tdam insequente vocali dis- 
simulautiir ; utriusque exemplum posuimus: IMultum ille et terris. Vitafur etiam 
duriorum inter se con.gressus, unde pellexii, et colic ff it et qua; alio loco dicta sunt." 
— L, ii., c. 3, p. 696. 



State OF SociETV. LATIN PRONUNCIATIOK. 559 

educated part of the community is preserved from these 
corrupt modes of prouunciation. Tiiere is always, tlierefore, 
a standard by wliicli common speech may be rectified, and in 
})roportion to the diffusion of knowledge and politeness the 
deviations from it will be more slight and gradual. But in 
distant provinces, and especially where the language itself is 
but of recent introduction, many more changes may be ex- 
pected to occur. Even m France and England there are pro- 
vincial dialects which, if written with all their anomalies of 
pronunciation as well as idiom, would seem strangely out of 
unison with the regular language ; and in Italy, as is well 
known, the varieties of dialect are still more striking. Now, 
in an advancing state of society, and especially with such a 
vigorous political circulation as we experience in England, 
language will constantly ap})roximate to uniformity, as provin- 
cial expressions are more and more rejected for incorrectness 
or inelegance. But where literature is on the decline, and 
public misfortunes contract the circle of those who are solici- 
tous about refinement, as in the last ages of the Eoman Empire, 
there will be no longer any definite standard of living speech, 
nor any general desire to conform to it if one could be found ; 
and thus the vicious corruptions of the vulgar will entirely 
predominate. The niceties of ancient idiom will be totally 
lost, while new idioms will be formed out of violations of gram- 
mar sanctioned by usage, Avhich, among civilized people, would 
have been proscribed at their appearance. 

Such appears to have been the ])rogress of corruption in the 
Latin language. The adoption of words from the Teutonic 
dialects of the barbarians, which took })lace very freely, would 
not of itself have destroyed the character of that language, 
thougli it sullied its purity. The worst law Latin of the Middle 
Ages is still Latin, if its barbarous terms have been bent 
to the regular inflections. It is possible, on the other hand, to 
write whole pages of Italian wherein every word shall be of 
unequivocal Latin derivation, though the character and person- 
ality, if I may so say, of the language be entirely dissimilar. 
But, as I conceive, the loss of literature took away the only 
check upon arbitrary pronunciation and upon erroneous gram- 
mar. Each people innovated through caprice, imitation of 
their neighbors, or some of those indescribable causes wliich 
dispose the organs of different na,tions to different sounds. The 
French melted down the middle consonants, the Italians omitted 
the final. Corruptions arising out of ignorance were mingled 
with those of pronunciation. It would have been marvellous 



560 PRONUNCIATION NOT REGULATED Chap. IX. Part I. 

if illiterate and h\'iiii-barl>arous pru\'iiu'ials had preserved that 
delicate precision in using the inflections of tenses which our 
best scholars do not clearly attain. The common speech of any 
people whose language is highly complicated will be full of 
solecisms. The French inflections are not comparable in num- 
ber or delicacy to the Latin, and yet the vulgar confuse their 
most ordinary forms. 

But, in all probability, the variation of these derivative lan- 
guages from popular Latin has been considerably less than it 
appears. In the purest ages of Latinity the citizens of Rome 
itself made use of many terms which we deem barbarous, and of 
many idioms which we should reject as modern. That highly 
complicated grammar which the best writers employed was too 
elliptical and obscure, too deficient in the connecting parts of 
speech, for general use. We cannot, indeed, ascertain in what 
degree the vulgar Latin differed from that of Cicero or Seneca. 
It would be higldy absurd to imagine, as some are said to have 
done, that modern Italian was spoken at Rome under Augustus. 
But I believe it may be asserted not only that much the greater 
part of those words in the present language of Italy which 
strike us as incapable of a Latin etymology are in fact derived 
from those current in the Augustan age, but that very many 
phrases which oifended nicer ears prevailed in the same ver- 
nacular speech, and have passed from thence into the modern 
French and Italian. Such, for example, was the frequent use 
of prepositions to indicate a relation between two parts of a 
sentence which a. classical writer would have made to depend 
on mere inflection.^ 

From the difficulty of retaining a right discrimination of 
tense seems to have proceeded the active auxiliary verb. It is 
possible that this was borrowed from the Teutonic languages 
of the barbarians, and accommodated both by them and by the 
natives to words of Latin origin. The passive auxiliary is ob- 
tained by a very ready resolution of any tense in that mood, 
and has not been altogether dispensed with even in Greek, 
while in Latin it is used much more frequently. It is not quite 
so easy to perceive the propriety of the active liaheo or teneo, 
one or both of which all modern languages have adopted as 
their auxiliaries in conjugating the verb. But in some in- 

^ M. Bonamy, in an essay printed in Mem. de I'Academie des Insoriptions, t. xxiv., 
has produced several proofs of this from tlie classical writers on afrriculiuic and other 
arts, tliough some of his instances are not in point, asany school-l)o\' would have told 
liim. This essay contains the l)est view that I have seen of the jirocess of transition 
by which Latin was changed into French and Italian. Add, however, the preface to 
Tirabosclii's third volume and the thirty-second dissertation of Muratori. 



State OF SociKTY. BY QUANTITY. 561 

stances this analysis is not improper ; and it may be supposed 
that nations careless of etymology or correctness applied the 
same verb by rude analogy to cases where it ought not strictly 
to have been employed. 

Next to the changes founded on pronunciation and to the 
substitution of auxiliary verbs for inflections, the usage of the 
definite and indefinite articles in nouns appears the most con- 
siderable step in the transmutation of Latin into its derivative 
languages. None but Latin, I believe, has ever wanted this 
part of speech ; and the defect to which custom reconciled 
the Romans would be an insuperable stumbling-block to na- 
tions who were to transla,te their original idiom into that lan- 
guage. A coarse expedient, of applying unus, ipse, or ille to 
the purposes of an article might perhaps be no infrequent 
vulgarism of the provincials ; and after the Teutonic tribes 
brought in their own grammar, it was natual that a corruption 
shoidd become universal, which in fact supplied a real and 
essential deficiency. 

That the quantity of Latin syllables is neglected, or rather 
lost, in modern pronunciation, seems to be generally admitted. 
Whether, indeed, the ancient Romans, in their ordinary speak- 
ing, distinguished the measure of syllables with such uniform 
musical accuracy as we imagine, giving a certain time to those 
termed long, and exactly half that duration to the short, might 
very reasonably be questioned ; though this was probably done, 
or attempted to be done, by every reader of poetry. Certainly, 
however, the laws of quantity were forgotten, and an accentual 
pronunciation came to predominate, before Latin had ceased 
to be a living language. A Christian writer named Commodi- 
anus, who lived before the end of the third century according 
to some, or, as others think, in the reign of Constantiue, has 
left us a philological curiosity, in a series of attacks on the 
pagan superstitions,^ composed in what are meant to be verses 

5 No description can give so adequate a notion of tliis extraordinary performance 
as a short specimen. Tal^e the introductory lines, which really, prejudices of educa- 
tion apart, are by no means inharmonious : 

Prjefatio nostra viam erranti diMiioustrat, 
Eespectumque bonum, cum vi ncrit saculi meta, 
yEternum fieri, quod discrechnit iuscia corda. 
Ego sindliter erruAi tciniKirc multo, 
Fana pro.-iecjui'iKlo, i):ir('Utibus insciis ipsis. 
Abstuli me tanilcm inde, legcndo de lege, 
Testiticor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turba 
Inscia quod perdit, pergens deos quKrere vanos. 
Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum. 

Commodianus is publi.slied by Dawes at the end of his edition of Jlinucius Felix. 
Some specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries. 



562 TEOCHAIC VERSE. Chap. IX. Part I. 

regulated by accent instead of quantity, exactly as we read 
Virgil at present. 

It is not improbable that Commodianus may have written 
in Africa, the province in which more than any the purity of 
Latin Avas debased. At the end of the fourth century'St. 
Augustin assailed his old enemies, the Donatists, with nearly 
the same arms tliat Commodian\is had wielded against heathen- 
ism. But as the refined and various music of hexameters was 
unlikely to be relished by the vulgar, he prudently adopted a 
diiferent measure.^ All the nations of Europe seem to love 
the trochaic verse. It was frequent on the Greek and Roman 
stage ; it is more common than any other in the popular poetry 
of modern languages. This proceeds from its simplicity, its 
liveliness, and its ready accommodation to dancing and music. 
In St. Augustin's poem he united to a trochaic measure the 
novel attraction of rhyme. 

As Africa must have lost all regard to the rules of measure 
in the fourth century, so it appears that Gaul was not more 
correct in tlie next two ages. A poem addressed by Auspicius, 
bishop of Toul, to Count Arbogastes, of earlier date probably 
than the invasion of Clovis, is written with no regard to quan- 
tity.'' The bishop by whom this was composed is mentioned 
by his contemporaries as a man of learning. Probably he did 
not choose to perplex the barbarian to whom he was writing 
(for Arbogastes is plainly a barbarous name) by legitimate 
Roman metre. In the next century Gregory of Tours informs 
us that Chilperic attempted to write Latin verses ; but the 
lines could not be reconciled to any division of feet, his ignor- 
ance having confounded long and short syllables together. 
Now Chilperic must have learned to speak Latin like other 
kings of the Franks, and was a smatterer in several kinds of 
literature. If Chilperic, therefore, were not master of these 

6 Archaeologia, vol. xiv., p. 188. The following are the first lines : 

Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare; 
Propter hoc Doniinus noster voliiit nos prsemonere, 
Comf)arans regnum co-lorum reticulo misso in mare, 
Congrt'ganti multo.s pisces, omne genus hinc et iiule, 
Quos cuin traxissent arl littus, tunc ccrperunt separare, 
Bonos in vasa miserunt, rcli(iuos malos in mare. 
This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have been later 
than his age. 

7 Kecueil des Historiens, t. i., h. 814; it begins in the following manner • 

Pra?celso expectabili bis Arbogasto comiti 
Auspicius, (jui diligo, saluteni dice plurimam. 
Magnas cirlesti Domino rependo corde gratias 
Quod te Tullensi proxime magnum in urbe vidimus. 
Multis me tuis artibus iKtiflcabas antea, 
Sed nunc fecisti maxlmo me exultare gaudio. 



I 



State of Society. LATLNT BECOMES ROMANCE. 563 

distinctions, we may conclude that the bishops and otlier llo- 
mans with whom he conversed did not observe tliem ; and that 
his blunders in versification arose from ignorance of rules 
which, however fit to be preserved in poetry, were entirely 
obsolete in the living Latin of his age. Indeed, the frequency 
of false quantities in the poets even of the fifth, but much 
more of the sixth century, is palpable. Fortunatus is quite 
full of them. This seems a decisive proof that the ancient 
pronunciation was lost. Avitus tells us that few preserved 
the proper measure of syllables in singing. Yet he was 
lUshop of Vienne, where a purer pronunciation might be 
expected than in the remoter parts of Gaul. 

§ 5. Defective, however, as it had become in respect of 
pronunciation, Latin was still spoken in France during the 
sixth and seventh centuries. We have compositions of that 
time, intended for the people, in grammatical language. A 
song is still extant in rhyme and loose accentual measure, 
written upon a victory of Clotaire II. over the Saxons in 022, 
and obviously intended for circulation among the people. 
Fortunatus says, in his life of St. Aubin of Angers, that he 
should take care not to use any expression unintelligible to 
the people. Baudemind, in the middle of the seventh century, 
declares, in his life of St. Amand, that he writes in a rustic 
and vulgar style, that the reader may be excited to imitation. 
Not that these legends were actually perused by the populace, 
for the very art of reading was confined to a few. But they 
were read publicly in the churches, and probably with a pro- 
nunciation accommodated to the corruptions of ordinary 
language. Still, the Latin syntax must have been tolerably 
understood ; and we may therefore say that Latin had not 
ceased to be a living language, in G-anl at least, before the 
latter part of the seventh century. Faults, indeed, against 
the rules of grammar, as well as unusual idioms, perpetually 
occur in the best writers of the Merovingian period, such as 
Gregory of Tours ; while charters drawn up by less expert 
scholars deviate much farther from purity. 

The corrupt provincial idiom became gradually more and 
more dissimilar to grammatical Latin ; and the lingua llo- 
mana rustica, as the vulgar patois (to borrow a word that I 
cannot well translate) had been called, acquired a distinct 
character as a new language in the eighth century. Latin 
orthography, which had been hitherto pretty well maintained 
in books, though not always in charters, gave way to a new 
spelling, conformably to the current pronunciation. Thus we 



564 ITS CORRUPTION IN ITALY. Chap. IX. Part I. 

find liii for illius, in the Formularies of Marculfiis ; and Tu lo 
juva in a liturgy of Cliarlemague's age, for Tu ilium juva. 
When this barrier was once broken down, such a deluge of 
innovation poured in, that all the characteristics of Latin were 
effaced in writing as well as speaking, and the existence of a 
new language became undeniable. In a council held at Tours 
in 813, the bishops are ordered to have certain homilies of 
the fathers translated into the rustic Eoman, as well as the 
German tongue. • After this it is unnecessary to multiply 
proofs of the change which Latin had undergone. 

In Italy the progressive corruptions of the Latin language 
were analogous to those which occurred in France, though 
we do not find in writings any unequivocal specimens of a 
new formation at so early a period. But the old inscriptions, 
even of the fourth and fifth centuries, are full of solecisms and 
corru})t orthography. In legal instruments under the Lom- 
bard kings the Latin inflections are indeed used, but with so 
little regard to propriety that it is obvious the writers had 
not the slightest tincture of grammatical knowledge. This 
observation extends to a very large proportion of such docu- 
ments down to the twelfth century, and is as applicable to 
France and Spain as it is to Italy. In these charters the 
peculiar characteristics of Italian orthography and grammar 
frequently appear. Thus we find, in the eighth century, dive- 
atis for deheatis, da for de in the ablative, avendi for habendi, 
dava for dabat, cedo a deo , and ad ecdesia, among many sim- 
ilar corruptions. Latin was so changed, it is said by a writer 
of Chai'lemagne's age, that scarcely any part of it was popu- 
larly known. Italy, indeed, had suffered more than France 
itself by invasion, and was reduced to a lower state of barba- 
rism, though probably, from the greater distinctness of pro- 
nunciation habitual to the Italians, they lost less of their 
original language than the French. I do not find, however, 
in the writers who have treated this subject, any express evi- 
dence of a vulgar language distinct from Latin earlier than 
the close of the tenth century, when it is said in tlie epitaph 
of Pope Gregory V. (who died in 999), that he instructed the 
people in three dialects — the Frankish, or German, the vul- 
gar, and the Latin.* 

§ 6. When Latin had thus ceased to be a living language, 
the whole treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes 
of the people. The few who might have imbibed a taste for 

8 Usus Francisca, vulgari, et voce Latiiia 
Instituit populos eloquio tripici. 



State of Society. CONSEQUENT IGNORANCE. 565 

literature, if books had been accessible to them, were reduced 
to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated through a 
kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools, 
confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively de- 
signed for the purposes of religion, afforded no encourage- 
ment or opportunities to the laity. The worst effect was, that, 
as the ncAvly-formed languages were hardly made use of in 
writing, Latin being still preserved in all legal instruments 
and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as well as 
books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the 
account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of 
whatever rank, to know how to sign his name ! Their char- 
ters, till the use of seals became general, were subscribed with 
the mark of the cross. Still more extraordinary it was to 
find one who had any tincture of learning. Even admitting 
every indistinct commendation of a monkish biographer (with 
whom a knowledge of church music would pass for literature), 
we could make out a very short list of scholars. None, cer- 
tainly, were more distinguished as such than Charlemagne 
and Alfred ; but the former, unless we reject a very plain tes- 
timony, was incapable of writing ; ^ and Alfred found difficulty 
in making a translation from the pastoral instruction of St. 
Gregory, on account of his imperfect knowledge of Latin. 

Whatever mention, therefore, we find of learning and the 
learned during these dark ages, must be understood to relate 
only to such as were within the pale of clergy, which, indeed, 
was pretty extensive, and comprehended many who did not 
exercise the offices of religious ministry. But even the clergy 
were, for a long period, not very materially superior, as a 

9 Tlie passage in Eginhard, which has occasioned so much dispute, speaks for 
itself : Tentabat et scribere, tabulasque et codicillos ad lioc in lecticula sub cervicali- 
bus cireumferie solebat, ut, cum vacuum tempus esset, manum etfigiandis literis 
assuef'aceret ; sod panim prospere successit hibor prieposterus ac sero iuclioatus. 

Many are still unwilling to believe that Cliarlemagne could not write. JI. Ampere 
observes that the emperor asserts himself to have been the author of the Libri Caro- 
lini, and is said by some to have composed verses. Hist. Litt. de la France, iii., 37. 
But did not Henry VIII. claim a book against Luther, which was not written by him- 
self? Quifacit per alium,facit per se, is in ajl cases a royal prerogative. Even if the 
book were Charlemagne's own, might he not have dictated it ? I have been in- 
formed that there is a manuscript at Vienna with autograph notes of Charlemagne 
in the margin, fiut is tliere sufBcient evidence of their genuineness ? The great 
difficulty is to get over tlie words which I have quoted from Eginhard. M. Ampere 
ingeniously conjectures that the passage does not relate to simple common writing, 
but to caligraphy — the art of delineating characters in a beautiful manner, prac- 
tised by the covpists, and of which a contemporaneous specimen may be seen in the 
well-known Bible of the British Museum. Yet it must be remembered that Charle- 
magne's early ife passed in the deptlis of ignorance ; and Eginhard gives a fair 
reason why he fq,iled in acquiring the art of writing, that he began too late. Fingers 
of fifty are not made for a new skill. It is not, of course, implied by the words 
that he could not write his own name ; but that he did not acquire such a facility as 
he desired. 



566 IGNORANCE CONSEQUENT ON Chap. IX. Part I. 

body, tc the uniustructecl laity. A cloud of ignorance over- 
spread the whole face of the Church, hardly broken by a few- 
glimmering lights, who owe much of their distinction to the 
surrounding darkness. In the sixth century the best writers 
in Latin were scarcely read; and perhaps from the middle 
of this age to the eleventh there was, in a general-view of 
literature, little difference to be discerned. If we look more 
accurately, there will appear certain gradual shades of twi- 
light on each side of the greatest obscurity. France reached 
her lowest point about the beginning of the eighth century ; 
but England was at that time respectable, and did not fall into 
complete degradation till the middle of the ninth. There 
could be nothing more deplorable than the state of letters in 
Italy and in England during the succeeding century ; but 
France cannot be denied to have been uniformly, though very 
slowly, progressive from the time of Charlemagne. 

Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant 
testimony. Contracts were made verbally, for want of 
notaries capable of drawing up charters ; and these, Avhen 
written, were frequently barbarous and ungrammatical to an 
incredible degree. For some considerable intervals scarcely 
any monument of literature has been preserved, except a few 
jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of saints, or verses equal- 
ly destitute of spirit and metre. In almost every council the 
ignorance of the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is 
asserted by one held in 992 that scarcely a single person was 
to be found in Kome itself who knew the first elements of 
letters. Not one priest of a thousand in Spain, about the age 
of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of salutation 
to another. In England, Alfred declares that he could not 
recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most 
civilized part of England), at the time of his accession, who 
understood the ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into 
his mother tongue. Nor was this better in the time of 
Dunstan, when, it is said, none of the clergy knew how to 
write or translate a Latin letter. The homilies which they 
preached were compiled for their use by some bishops, from 
former works of the same kind, or the Avvitings of the fatliers. 

This universal ignorance was rendered unavoidable, among 
other causes, by the scarcity of books, which could only be 
procured at an immense price. From the conc^uest of Alexan- 
dria by the Saracens at the beginning of the seventh century, 
when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be imported 
into Europe, to the close of the eleventh, about which time 



State OF Society. THE DISUSE OF LATIN". 567 

the art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have 
been introduced, tliere were no materials for writing exce})t 
parchment, a substance too ex]iensive to be readily spared for 
mere purposes of literature. Hence an unfortunate practice 
gained ground, of erasing a manuscript in order to substitute 
another on the same skin. This occasioned the loss of many 
ancient authors, who have made way for the legends of saints, 
or other ecclesiastical rubbish. 

If we would listen to some literary historians, we should 
believe that the darkest ages contained many individuals, not 
only distinguished among their contemporaries, but positively 
eminent for abilities and knowledge. A proneuess to extol 
every monk of whose production a few letters or a devotional 
treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is related that he 
composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of the 
l)enedictines of St. Maur, the Literary History of France, 
and, in a less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in 
most books of this class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and 
a number of inferior names, become real giants of learning in 
their uncritical panegyrics. But one might justly say that 
ignorance is the smallest defect of the writers of these dark 
ages. Several of them were tolerably acquainted with books ; 
but that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original argu- 
ment or expression. Almost every one is a compiler of 
scraps from the fathers, or from such semi-classical aiithors as 
Boethius, Cassiodorus, or Martianus Capella. Indeed I am 
not aware that there appeared more than two really consider- 
able men in the republic of letters from the sixth to the middle 
of the eleventh century — John, surnamed Scotus or Erigena, 
a native of Ireland ; and Gerbert, who became pope by the 
name of Silvester II. : ^° the first endowed with a bold and 

i» .John Scotus, who, it is almost needless to say, must not be confounded with the 
still more famous metaphysician Duns Scotus, lived under Charles tlie Bald, in the 
middle of the ninth century. It admits of no doubt that John Scotus was, in a liter- 
ary and philosophical sense, the most remarkable man of the Dark Ages ; no one else 
had his boldness, his subtlety in threading tlie labyrinths of metajiliysical specula- 
tions which, in the west of Europe, had been .utterly disregarded. But it is another 
question whether he can be reckoned an original writer; those who have attended 
most to his treatise De Divisione Natura;, the most abstruse of his works, consider it 
as the development of an Oriental philosophy, acquired during his residence in Greece, 
and nearly coinciding with some of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school, 
but witli a more equivocal tendency to pantheism. This manifests itself in some 
extracts Avliich have latterly been nindo from the treatise De I)ivisione Naturie; but 
tliough Scotus had not the reputation of unblemished ortluidoxy, the drift of his phi- 
losophy was not understood in that barbarous period. He might, indeed, liave ex- 
cited censure by his intrepid preference of reason to .authority. " Authority," lie 
says, " springs from reason, not reason from authority — true reason needs not be 
confirmed bv anv authoritv." 

Silvester' II. "died in 1003. Whether he first brought the Arabic numeration into 
Europe, as has been commonly said, seems uncertain; it was at least not much prac- 
tised for some centuries after his death, 



568 WANT OF LITERARY EMINENCE. Chap. IX. Paut I. 

acute metaphysical genius ; the second excellent, for the time 
when he lived, in mathematical science and mechanical inven- 
tions. 

§ 7. If it be demanded by Avhat cause it happened that a 
few sparks of ancient learning survived throughout this long 
winter, Ave can only ascribe their preservation to the estab- 
lishment of Christianity. Keligion alone made. a bridge, as 
it were, across the chaos, and has linked the two periods of 
ancient and modern civilization. Without this' connecting 
principle, Europe might indeed have awakened to intellectual 
pursuits, and the genius of recent times needed not to be in- 
vigorated by the imitation of antiquity. But the memory of 
Greece and Rome would have been feebly ])reserved by tradi- 
tion, and tlie monuments of those nations might have excited, 
on the return of civilization, that vague sentiment of specula- 
tion and Avonder Avith Avhich men noAv contemplate Perse])olis 
or the Pyramids. It is not, however, from religion simply 
that Ave have derived this advantage, but from religion as it 
was modified in the Dark Ages. Such is the complex recipro- 
cation of good and evil in the dispensations of Providence, 
that Ave may assert, with only an apparent paradox, that, had 
religion been more pure, it would have been less permanent, 
and that Christianity has been preserved by means of its cor- 
ruptions. Tlie sole hope for literature depended on the Latin 
language ; and I do not see why that should not have been 
lost, if three circumstances in the prevailing religious system, 
all of Avhich we are justly accustomed to disapprove, had not 
conspired to maintain it — the pai)al supremacy, the monastic 
institutions, and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. A continual 
intercourse Avas kept up, in consequence of the first, betAveen 
Rome and the several nations of Europe ; her laws Avere re- 
ceived by the bishops, her legates presided in councils , so that 
a common language Avas as necessary in the Church as it is at 
present in t];e dij^lomatic relations of kingdoms. 2. Through- 
out the Avhole course of the Middle Ages there Avas no learning, 
and very little regularity of manners, among the i^arochial cler- 
gy. Almost every distinguished man was either the member 
of a chapter or of a convent. The monasteries were sul)jected 
to strict rules of discipline, and held out, at the Avorst, more 
opportunities for study than the secular clergy possessed, and 
fewer for worldly dissipations. But their most important 
service was as secure repositories for books. All our manvi- 
scripts haA^e been preserved in this manner, and could hardly 
hs^ve descended to us by any other channel ; at least there 



State of Society. PRESERVATION OF LEARNING. 569 

were intervals when I do not conceive tliat any royal or private 
libraries existed. ^^ 3. Monasteries, however, would probably 
have contributed very little towards the preservation of learn- 
ing, if the Scriptures and the liturgy had been translated out 
of Latin when tliat language ceased to be intelligible. Every 
rational principle of religious woi'ship called for such a change ; 
but it would have been made at the expense of posterity. 
Moreover, the clergy did not want good pretexts, on the 
ground of convenience, for opposing innovation. They were 
habituated to the Latin words of the Church service, which 
had become, by this association, tlie readiest instruments of 
devotion, and with the majesty of which the Romance jargon 
could bear no comparison. Their musical chants were 
adapted to these sounds, and their hymns depended, for metri- 
cal effect, on the marked accents and powerful rhymes which 
the Latin language affords. The vulgate Latin of the Bible 
was still more venerable. It was like a copy of a lost original, 
and a copy attested by one of the most eminent fathers, and 
by the general consent of the Church. These are certainly no 
adequate excuses for keeping the people in ignorance ; and the 
gross corruption of the JMiddle Ages is in a great degree assign- 
able to tills policy. But learning, and consequently religion, 
have eventually derived from it the utmost advantage. 

§ 8. In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand 
superstitions, like foul animals of night, were propagated and 
nourished. It would be very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few 
specimens of this odious brood, when the real character of 
those times is only to be judged by their accumulated multi- 
tude. There are many books from which a sufficient number 
of instances may be collected to show the absurdity and 
Ignorance of the Middle Ages in this respect. I shall only 
mention two, as affording more general evidence than any 
local or obscure superstition. In the tenth century an 
opinion prevailed everywhere that the end of the world was 
approacliing. Many charters begin with these words, " As the 
world is now drawing to its close." An army marching under 
the Emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun, 
which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to' 
disperse hastily on all sides. As this notion seems to have 
been founded on some confused theory of the millennium, it 

11 Charlemagne had a library at Aix-Ia-Chapelle, which he directed to be sold at 
his death for tlie benefit of tliepoor. His son Louis is said to liave collected some 
books. But this rather confirms, on the whole, my supposition that, in some periods, 
no royal or private libraries existed, since there were not always princes or nobles 
with the spirit of Charlemagne, or even Louis the Debonair. 



570 SUPERSTITIONS. Cuap. IX. Part I. 

naturally died away when the seasons proceeded in the 
eleventh century with their usual regularity. A far more 
remarkable and permanent superstition was the appeal to 
Heaven in judicial controversies, whether through the means 
of coml)at or of ordeal. The ])rinciple of these was the same ; 
but in the former it was mingled with feelings independent of 
religion — the natural dictates of resentment in a brave man 
unjustly accused, and the sym|)athy of a warlike people with 
the display of skill and intrepidity. These, in course of time, 
almost obliterated the primary character of judicial combat, 
and iiltimately changed it into the modern diiel, in which 
assuredly there is no mixture of superstition.^^ But, in the 
various tests of imiocence Avhich were called ordeals, this stood 
undisguised and unqualitied. It is not necessary to describe 
what is so well known — the ceremonies of trial by handling 
hot iron, by plunging the arm into boiling fluids, by floating 
or sinking in cold water, or by swallowing a piece of conse- 
crated bread. It is observable that, as the interference of 
Heaven was relied u])on as a matter of course, it seems to have 
been reckoned nearly indifferent whether such a test were 
adopted as must, humanly considered, absolve all the guilty, 
or one that must convict all the innocent. The ordeals of hot 
iron or water were, however, more commonly used ; and it has 
been a perplexing question by what dexterity these tre- 
mendous proofs were eluded. They seem at least to have 
placed the decision of all judicial controversies in the hands 
of the clergy, who must have known the secret, whatever that 
might b?, of satisfying the spectators that an accused person 
had held a mass of burning iron with impunity. For several 
centuries this mode of investigation was in great repute, though 
not Avithout opposition from some eminent bishops. It does 
discredit to the memory of Charlemagne that he was one of 
its warmest advocates. But the judicial combat, which, indeed, 
might l)e reckoned one species of ordeal, gradually jjut an end 
to the rest ; and as the Church acquired better notions of law, 
and a code of her own, she strenuously exerted herself against 
all these barbarous superstitions. 

12 Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual frays and single 
combat during war, was unknown before tlie sixteenth century. But we find one 
anecdote wliich seems to illustrate its derivation from tlie judicial combat. The 
dulces of Lancaster and lirunswick, having some difierences, iigrecd to decide them 
by duel before .Jolin, king of France. The lists were prepared witli the solemnity of 
a real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent tlie engagement. The bar- 
barous practice of wearing swords ns ;i part of domestic dress, wliich tended very 
niucli to tlie frequency of duelling, was not introduced till tlie latter part of tlie 15th 
century. 



State of Society. ENTHUSIASTIC RISINGS. 571 

§ 9. But the religious ignorance of the Middle Ages some- 
times burst out in ebullitions of epidemical enthusiasm, more 
remarkable than these superstitious usages, though proceeding 
in fact from similar causes. For enthusiasm is little else 
than superstition put in motion, and is equally founded on a 
strong conviction of supernatural agency, without any just 
conceptions of its nature. Nor has any denomination of Chris- 
tians produced, or even sanctioned, more fanaticism than the 
Church of Rome. These epidemical frenzies, however, to 
which I am alluding, were merely tumultuous, though certainly 
fostered by the creed of perpetual miracles which the clergy 
inculcated, and drawing a legitimate precedent for religious 
insurrection from the Crusades. For these, among other evil 
consequences, seem to have principally excited a wild fanati- 
cism that did not sleep for several centuries. 

The first conspicuous appearance of it was in the reign of 
Philip Augustus, when the mercenary troops dismissed from 
the pay of that prince and of Henry II. committed the great- 
est outrages in the south of France. One Durand, a carpen- 
ter, deluded, it is said, by a contrived appearance of the Vir- 
gin, put himself at the head of an army of the populace, in 
order to destroy those marauders. His followers were styled 
Brethren of the White Caps, from the linen coverings of their 
heads. They bound themselves not to play at dice nor fre- 
quent taverns, to wear no affected clothing, to avoid perjury 
and vain swearing. After some successes over the plunderers, 
they went so far as to forbid the lords to take any dues from 
their vassals, on pain of incurring the indignation of the 
brotherhood. It may easily be imagined that they were soon 
entirely discomfited, so that no one dared to own that he had 
belonged to them. 

During the captivity of St. Louis in Egypt, a more exten- 
sive and terrible ferment broke out in Flanders, and spread 
from tlience over great part of France. An impostor declared 
himself commissioned by the Virgin to preach a crusade, not 
to the rich and noble, who for their pride had been rejected of 
God, but the poor. His disciples were called Pastoureaux, the 
simplicity of shepherds having exposed them more readily to 
this delusion. In a short time they were swelled by the con- 
fluence of abundant streams to a moving mass of a hundred 
thousand men, divided into companies, with banners bearing a 
cross and a lamb, and commanded by the impostor's lieuten- 
ants. He assumed a priestly character, preaching, absolving, 
annulling marriages. At Amiens, Bourges, Orleans, and Paris 



572 ENTHUSIASTIC RISINGS. Chat. IX. Pakt I, 

itself, he was received as a divine prophet. Even the Regent 
Blanche, for a time, was led away by the popnlar tide. His 
main topic Avas reproach of the clergy for tlieir idleness and 
corrnption — a theme well adapted to the ears of tlie people, 
who had long been uttering similar strains of complaint. In 
some towns his followers massacred the priests and plundered 
the monasteries. The Government at length began to exert 
itself ; and, the public sentiment turning against the authors 
of so much confusion, this rabble was put to the sword or dis- 
sipated. Seventy years afterwards an insurrection almost ex- 
actly parallel to this burst out under the same pretence of a 
crusade. These insurgents, too, bore the name of Pastou- 
reaux, and their short career was distinguished by a general 
massacre of the Jews. 

But though tlie contagion of fanaticism spreads much more 
rapidly among the populace, and in modern times is almost 
entirely confined to it, there were examples, in the Middle 
Ages, of an epidemical religious lunacy from which no class 
was exempt. One of these occurred about the year 12(30, when 
a multitude of every rank, age, and sex, marching two by two 
in procession along the streets and public roads, mingled 
groans and dolorous hymns with the sound of leathern scourges 
which they exercised u,pon their naked backs. From this 
mark of penitence, which, as it bears at least all the appear- 
ance of sincerity, is not uncommon in the Church of Borne, 
they acquired the name of Flagellants. Their career began, it 
is said, at Perugia, whence they spread over the rest of Italy, 
and into Germany and Poland. As this spontaneous fanati- 
cism met with no encoui-agement from the Church, and was 
prudently discountenanced by the civil magistrate, it died 
away in a very short time. But it is more surprising that, 
after almost a century and a half of continual im})rovement 
and illumination, another irruption of popular extravagance 
burst out under circumstances exceedingly similar. " In the 
month of August, 1399," says a contemporary historian, " there 
n,p[)eared all over Italy a description of persons, called Bian- 
chi, from the white linen vestment that they wore. They 
passed from province to province, and from city to city, crying 
out Misericordia ! with their faces covered and bent towards 
the ground, and bearing before them a great crucifix. Their 
constant song was, Stabat Mater dolorosa. This lasted three 
months ; and whoever did not attend their procession was 
reputed a heretic." Almost every Italian writer of the time 
takes notice of thege Bianchi; and Muratori ascribes a re- 



State of Socikty. PRETENDED MIRACLES. 573 

markable reformation of manners (though certainly a very 
transient one) to their influence. Nor were they confined to 
Italy, thougli no such meritorious exertions are imputed, to 
tliem in other countries. In Erance their practice of covering 
the face gave such opportunity to crimes as to be prohibited 
by the government ; and we have an act on the rolls of tlie 
first Parliament of Henry IV., forbidding any one, "under ])ain 
of forfeiting all his worth, to receive the new sect in white 
clothes, pretending to great sanctity," which had recently ap- 
2)eared in foreign parts. 

§ 10. The devotion of the multitude was wrought to this 
feverish height by the prevailing system of the clergy. In 
that singular polytheism which had been grafted on Christian- 
ity, nothing was so conspicuous as the belief of perpetual 
miracles — if, indeed, those could properly be termed miracles 
which, by their constant recurrence, even upon trifling occa- 
sions, might seem within the ordinary dispensations of Prov- 
idence. These superstitions arose in what are called primitive 
times, and are certainly no part of popery, if in that word we 
include any especial reference to the Eoman See. But succes- 
sive ages of ignorance SAvelled the delusion to such an enormous 
pitch, that it was as difficult to trace, we may say without 
exaggeration, the real religion of the Gospel in the popular 
belief of the laity, as the real history of Charlemagne in the 
romance of Turpin. It must not be supposed that these ab- 
surdities were produced, as well as nourished, by ignorance. 
In most cases they were the work of deliberate imposture. 
Every cathedral or monastery had its tutelar saint, and every 
saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich the churches 
under his protection by exaggerating his virtues, his miracles, 
and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally 
for his patronage. Many of those saints were imaginary per- 
sons ; sometimes a blundered inscription added a name to tlie 
calendar, and sometimes, it is said, a heathen god was surprised 
at the company to which he was introduced, and the rites with 
which he was honored. 

§ 11. It would not be consonant to the nature of the present 
work to dwell upon the erroneousness of this religion ; but its 
effect upon the moral and intellectual character of mankind 
was so prominent that no one can take a philosophical view of 
the Middle Ages without attending more than is at present 
fashionable to their ecclesiastical history. That the exclusive 
worship of saints, under the guidance of an artful though illit- 
erate priesthood, degraded the understanding, and begot a stu- 



674 MISCHIEFS OF SUPERSTITION. Chap. IX. I'akt I. 

pid credulity and fanaticism, is sufficiently evident. But it 
was also so managed as to loosen the bonds of religion and 
pervert the standard of morality. If these inhabitants of 
heaven had been represented as stern avengers, accepting no 
slight atonement for heavy offences, and prompt to interpose 
their control over natural events for the detection and punish- 
ment of guilt, the creed, however impossible to be reconciled 
with experience, might have proved a salutary check upon a 
rude people, and would at least have had the only palliation 
that can be offered for a religious imposture, its political ex- 
pediency. In the legends of those times, on the contrary, they 
appeared only as perpetual intercessors, so good-natured and 
so powerful, that a sinner Avas more emphatically foolish than 
he is usually represented if he failed to secure himself against 
any bad consequences. For a little attention to the saints, 
and especially to the Virgin, with due liberality to their ser- 
vants, had saved, he would be told, so many of the most atro- 
cioiis delinquents, that he might equitably presume upon 
similar luck in his own case. 

This monstrous superstition grew to its height in the twelfth 
century. For the advance that learning then made was by no 
means sufficient to counteract the vast increase of monasteries, 
and the opportunities which the greater cultivation of modern 
languages afforded for the diffusion of legendary tales. It 
was now, too, that the veneration paid to the Virgin, in early 
times very great, rose to an almost exclusive idolatry. It is 
difficult to conceive the stupid absurdity and the disgusting 
})rofaneness of those stories which were invented by the monks 
to do her honor. 

§ 12. At the same time, it must be admitted that the evils 
of superstition in the Middle Ages, though separately con- 
sidered very serious, are not to be weighed against the bene- 
fits of the religion with \vhich they were so mingled. In the 
original prinei])les of monastic orders, and the rules by which 
they ought at least to have been governed, there was a charac- 
ter of meekness, self-denial, and charity that could not wholly 
be effaced. These virtues, rather than justice and veracity, 
were inculcated by the religious ethics of the IMiddle Ages ; 
and in the relief of indigence it may, upon the whole, be as- 
serted that the monks did not fall short of their profession. 
This eleemosynary spirit, indeed, remarkably distinguishes 
both Christianity and Mohammedanism from the moral sys- 
tems of Greece and Eome, which were very deficient in general 
humanity and sympathy with suffering. Nor do we find in 



State of Society. VICES OF MONKS AND CLERGY. 575 

any single instance during ancient times, if I mistake not, 
those public institutions lor the alleviation of human miseries 
which have long been scattered over every part of Europe. 
The virtues of the monks assumed a still higher character 
when they stood forward as protectors of the oppressed. By 
an established law, founded on very ancient superstition, the 
precincts of a church afforded sanctuary to accused persons. 
Under a due administration of justice this privilege Avould 
have been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly 
consider it to be in. those countries where it still subsists. 
But in the rapine and tumult of the Middle Ages the right of 
sanctuary might as often be a shield to innocence as an im- 
munity to crime. We can hardly regret, in reflecting on the 
desolating violence which prevailed, that there should have 
been some green spots in the wilderness where the feeble and 
the persecuted could find refuge. How must this right have 
enhanced the veneration for religious institutions ! Hoav gladly 
must the victims of internal warfare have turned their eyes 
from the baronial castle, the dread and scourge of the neighbor- 
hood, to those venerable walls within which not even the 
clamor of arms could be heard to disturb the chant of holy 
men and the sacred service of the altar ! The protection of 
the sanctuary was never withheld. A son of Chilperie, king 
of France, having fled to that of Tours, his father threatened 
to ravage all the lands of the Church unless they gave him up. 
Gregory the historian, bishop of the city, rei)lied in the name 
of his clergy that Christians could not be guilty of an act un- 
heard of among pagans. The king was as good as his word, 
and did not spare the estate of the Church, but dared not in- 
fringe its privileges. He had, indeed, previously addressed a 
letter to St. Martin, which was laid on Ids tomb in the Church, 
requesting permission to take away his son by force ; but the 
honest saint returned no answer. 

The virtues, indeed, or supposed virtues, which had induced 
a credulous generation to enrich so many of the monastic 
orders, were not long preserved. We must reject, in the ex- 
cess of our candor, all testimonies that the Middle Ages pre- 
sent, from the solemn declaration of councils and reports of 
judicial inquiry to the casual evidence of common fame in the 
ballad or romance, if we would extenuate the general corrup- 
tion of those institutions. In vain new rules of discipline 
were devised, or the old corrected by refoi-ms. Many of 
their worst vices grew so naturally out of their mode of life, 
that a stricter discipline could have no tendency to extirpate 



576 COMMUTATION OF PENANCES. Chap. IX. Part I. 

tliem. Such were the frauds 1 have already noticed, and the 
whole scheme of hypocritical austerities. Their extreme licen- 
tiousness was sometimes hardly concealed by the cowl of 
sanctity. 1 know not by what right we should disbelieve the 
reports of the visitation under Henry VIII., entering as they 
do into a multitude of specific cliarges both probable m their 
nature and consonant to the unanimous opinion of the world. 
Doubtless there were many communities, as well as individuals, 
to whom none of these reproaches Avould ap})ly. In the very 
best view, however, that can be taken of monasteries, their 
existence is deeply injurious to the general morals of a nation. 
They withdraw men of pure conduct and conscientious princi- 
ples from the exercise of social duties, and leave the common 
mass of human vice more unmixed. Such men are always in- 
clined to form schemes of ascetic perfection, which can only 
be fulfilled in retirement ; but in the strict rules of monastic 
life, and under the influence of a grovelling superstition, their 
virtue lost all its usefulness. Their frauds, however, were 
less atrocious than the savage bigotry with which they main- 
tained their own system and infected the laity. In Saxony, 
Poland, Lithuania, and the countries on the Baltic Sea, a san- 
guinary persecution extirpated the original idolatry. The 
Jews were everywhere the objects of popular insult and oppres- 
sion, frequently of a general massacre, though protected, it 
must be confessed, by the laws of the Church, as well as in 
general by temporal princes. Of the Crusades it is only neces- 
sary to repeat that they began in a tremendous eruption of 
fanaticism, and ceased only because that spirit could not be 
constantly kept alive. A similar influence produced the de- 
vastation of Languedoc, the stakes and scaffolds of tlie inqui- 
sition, and rooted in the religious theory of Europe those 
maxims of intolerance which it lias so slowly, and still Y)er- 
haps so imperfectly, renounced. 

§ 13. It IS a frequent complaint of ecclesiastical writers 
that the rigorous penances imposed by the primitive canons 
upon delinquents were commuted in a laxer state of discipline 
for less severe atonements, and ultimately indeed for money. 
We must not, however, regret that the clergy should have lost 
the power of eom})elling men to abstain fifteen years from eat- 
ing meat, or to stand exposed to public derision at the gates of 
a church. Such implicit submissiveness could only have pro- 
duced superstition and hypocrisy among the laity, and pre- 
pared the road for a tyranny not less oppressive than that 
of India or ancient Egypt. Indeed the two earliest instances of 



State of Societt. WANT OF LAW. 577 

ecelesiiistical interference with the rights of sovereigns — 
namely, tlie deposition of Wamba, in Spain, and tliat of Louis 
the Debonair — were founded upon this austere system of peni- 
tence. But it is true tliat a repentance redeemed by money 
or performed by a substitute could have no salutary effect on 
the sinner ; and some of the modes of atonement which the 
Church most approved were particularly hostile to public 
morals. None was so usual as pilgrimage, whether to Jeru- 
salem or Rome, which were the great objects of devotion, or to 
the shrine of some national saint — a James of Compostella, a 
David, or a Thomas a Becket. This licensed vagrancy was 
naturally productive of dissoluteness, especially among the 
women. Our English ladies, in their zeal to obtain the spiritual 
treasures of Rome, are said to have relaxed the necessary 
caution about one that was in their own custody. There is a 
capitulary of Charlemagne directed against itinerant peni- 
tents, who probably considered the iron chain around their 
necks an expiation of future as well as past offences. 

The Crusades may be considered as martial pilgrimages on 
an enormous scale, and their influence upon general morality 
seems to have been altogether pernicious. Those who served 
under the cross would not, indeed, have lived very virtuously 
at home ; but the coniidence m their own merits, wliicli the 
principle of such expeditions inspired, must have aggravated 
the ferocity and dissoluteness of their ancient habits. Sev- 
eral historians attested the depravation of morals which ex- 
isted both among the crusaders and in the states formed out 
of their conquests. 

§ 14. While religion had thus lost almost every quality 
that renders it conducive to the good order of society, the 
control of human law was still less ethcacious. But this part 
of my subject has been anticipated in other passages of the 
present work ; and I shall only glance at the want of regular 
subordination which rendered legislative and judicial edicts 
a dead letter, and at the incessant private warfare rendered 
legitimate by the usages of most Continental nations. Such 
hostilities, conducted as they must usually have been with 
injustice and cruelty, could not fail to produce a degree of 
rapacious ferocity in the general disposition of a people. And 
this certainly was among the characteristics of every nation 
for many centuries. 

It is easy to infer the degradation of society during the 
Dark Ages from the state of religion and police. Certainly 
there are a few great landmarks of moral distinctions so deeply 



578 DEGRADATION OF MORALS. Chap. IX. Part L 

fixed in human nature, that no degree of rudeness can destroy, 
nor even any superstition remove, them. Wherever an extreme 
corruption has in any particular society defaced these sacred 
archetypes that are given to guide and correct the sentiments 
of mankind, it is in the course of Providence that tlie society 
itself should perish by internal discord or the sword of a con- 
queror. In the worse ages of Europe there must have existed 
the seeds of social virtues, of fidelity, gratitude, and disinter- 
estedness, sufficient at least to preserve the public approbation 
of more elevated principles than the public conduct displayed. 
Without these imperishable elements there could have been no 
restoration of the moral energies ; nothing upon which reformed 
faith, revived knowledge, renewed law, could exercise their 
nourishing influences. But history, which reflects only the 
more prominent features of society, cannot exhibit the virtues 
that were scarcely able to struggle through the general depra- 
vation. I am aware that a tone of exaggerated declamation is 
at all times usual with those who lament the vices of their 
own time ; and writers of the Middle Ages are in abundant 
need of allowance on this score. Nor is it reasonable to found 
any inferences as to the general condition of society on single 
instances of crimes, however atrocious, especially when com- 
mitted under the influence of violent passion. Such enormities 
are the fruit of every age, and none is to be measured by them. 
They make, however, a strong impression at the moment, and 
thus find a place in contemporary annals, from which modern 
writers are commonly glad to extract whatever may seem to 
throw light upon manners. I shall, therefore, abstain from 
producing any particular cases of dissoluteness or cruelty from 
the records of the Middle Ages, lest I should weaken a general 
proposition by offering an imperfect induction to support it, 
and shall content myself with observing that times to which 
men sometimes appeal, as to a golden period, were far inferior 
in every moral comparison to those in which we are thrown. 
One crime, as more universal and characteristic than others, 
may be particularly noticed. All writers agree in the preva- 
lence of judicial perjury. It seems to have almost invariably 
escaped human punishment ; and the barriers of superstition 
were in this, as in every other instance, too feeble to prevent 
the commission of crimes. Many of the proofs by ordeal were 
applied to witnesses as well as those whom they accused ; and 
undoubtedly trial by combat was preserved in a considerable 
degree on account of the difficulty experienced in securing a 
just cause against the perjury of witnesses. Robert, king of 



State of Socikty. LOVE OF FIELD SPORTS. 579 

Erauce, perceiving liow frequently men foreswore themselves 
upon the relics of saints, and less shocked apparently at the 
crime than at the sacrilege, caused an empty reliquary of crys- 
tal to be used, that those who touched it might incur less guilt 
in fact, though not in intention. Such an anecdote character- 
izes both the man and the times. 

§ 15. The favorite diversions of the Middle Ages, in the in- 
tervals of war, were those of hunting and hawking. The for- 
mer must in all countries be a source of pleasure ; but it seems 
to have been enjoyed in moderation by the Greeks and Komans. 
With the Northern invaders, however, it was rather a predomi- 
nant appetite than an amusement ; it was their pride and their 
ornament, the theme of their songs, the object of their laws, 
and the business of their lives. Falconry, unknown as a diver- 
sion to the ancients, became from the fourth century an equally 
delightful occupation. From the Salic and other barbarous 
codes of the fifth century to the close of the period under our 
review, every age would furnish testimony to the ruling passion 
for these two species of chase, or, as they were sometimes 
called, the mysteries of woods and rivers. A knight seldom 
stirred from his house without a falcon on his wrist or a grey- 
hound that followed him. Thus are Harold and his attendants 
represented in the famous tapestry of Bayeux. And in the 
monuments of those who died anywhere Ijut on the field of 
battle, it is usual to find the greyhound lying at their feet, or 
the bird upon their wrists. Nor are the tombs of ladies with- 
out their falcon ; for this diversion, being of less danger and 
fatigue than the chase, was shared by the delicate sex. 

It was impossible to repress the eagerness with which the 
clergy, especially after the barbarians were tempted by rich 
bishoprics to take upon them the sacred functions, ruslied into 
these secular amusements. Prohibitions of councils, however 
frequently repeated, produced little effect. In some instances 
a particular monastery obtained a dispensation. Thus that of 
St. Denis, in 774, represented to Charlemagne that the flesh 
of hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and that their 
skins would serve to bind the books in the library. Eeasons 
equally cogent, we may presume, could not be wanting in every 
other case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly feudal 
lords, and often did not scruple to lead their vassals into the 
field, it was not to be expected that they should debar them- 
selves of an innocent pastime. It was hardly such indeed, 
when practised at the expense of others. Alexander III., by a 
letter to the clergy of Berksliirc, dispenses with their keejjing 



580 BAD STATE OF AGRICULTURE Chap. IX. Part I. 

the archdeacon iu dogs and hawks dnring his visitation. This 
season gave joviiil ecclesiastics an opportunity of trying different 
countries. An archbishop of York, iu l'o21, seems to have car- 
ried a train of two hundred persons, who were maintained at 
the expense of tlie abbeys on liis road, and to have hunted with 
a pack of hounds from ])arish to parish. The Third Council 
of Lateran, in 1180, had prohibited this amusement on such 
journeys, and restricted bishops to a train of forty or fifty 
horses. 

Though hunting had ceased to be a necessary means of pro- 
curing food, it was a very convenient resource, on which the 
wholesomeness and comfort, as well as the luxury, of the table 
depended. Before the natural pastures were improved, and 
new kinds of fodder for cattle discovered, it was impossible to 
maintain the svimmer stock during the cold season. Hence a 
portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter 
provision. We may suppose that, when no alternative was 
offered but these salted meats, even the leanest venison was 
devoured with relish. There was somewhat more excuse, 
therefore, for the severit}^ with which the lords of forests and 
manors preserved the beasts of chase than if they had been 
considered as merely objects of sport. The laws relating to 
preservation of game were in every country uncommonly rigor- 
ous. They formed in England that odious system of forest 
laws which distinguished the tyranny of our Norman kings. 
Capital punishment for killing a stag or wild boar was frequent, 
and perhaps warranted by law, until the charter of John. The 
French code was less severe, but even Henry IV. enacted the 
pain of death against the repeated offence of chasing deer in 
tlie royal forests. The privilege of hunting was reserved to the 
nol)ility till the reign of Louis IX., who extended it in some 
degree to persons of lower birth. 

This excessive passion for the sports of the field produced 
those evils which are apt to result from it — a strenuous idle- 
ness which disdained all useful occupations, and an oppressive 
si)irit towards the peasantry' . The devastation committed xmder 
the pretence of destroying wild animals, Avhich had been already 
protected in their depredations, is noticed in serious authors, 
and has also been the to])ic of popular ballads. AVhat effect 
this must have had on agriculture it is easy to conjecture. The 
levelling of forests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpa- 
tion of mischievous animals which inhabit them, are the first 
objects of man's labor in reclaiming the earth to his use ; and 
these were forbidden by a landed aristocracy, whose control 



State of Society. AND OF INTERNAL TRADE. 581 

over the progress of agricultural improvement was unlimited. 
and who had not } et learned to saerihce their pleasures to their 
avarice. 

§ 16. These habits of the rich, and the miseral)le servitude 
of those who cultivated the land, rendered its fertility unavail- 
ing. Predial servitude, indeed, in some of its moditications, 
has always been the great bar to improvement. In the agri- 
cultural economy of Konie the laboring husbandman, a menial 
slave of some wealthy senator, had not even that qualitied in- 
terest in the soil which the tenure of villenage afforded to the 
peasant of feudal ages. Italy, therefore, a country presenting 
many natural impediments, was but imperfectly reduced into 
cultivation before the irruption of the barbarians. That revo- 
lution destroyed agriculture with every other art, and succeed- 
ing calamities during five or six centuries left the finest regions 
of Europe unfruitful and desolate. There are but two possible 
modes in which the ])roduce of the earth can be increased; one 
by rendering fresh land serviceable, the other by improving 
the fertility of that which is already cultivated. The last is 
only attainable by the application of capital and of skill to 
agriculture, neither of which could be expected in the ruder 
ages of society. The former is, to a certain extent, always 
practicable while waste land remains ; but it was checked by 
laws hostile to improvement, such as the manorial and com- 
monable rights in England, and by the general tone of 
manners. 

Till the reign of Charlemagne there were no towns in Ger- 
many, except a few that had been erected on the liliine and 
Danube by the Romans. A house with its stables and farm 
buildings, surrounded by a liedge or enclosure, was called a 
court, or, as we find it in our law-books, a curtilage; the toft, 
or homestead, of a more genuine English dialect. One of 
these, with the adjacent domains of arable fields and woods, 
had the name of a villa or manse. Several manses com})osed 
a march, and several marches formed a pagus or district. 
From these elements in the progress of population arose vil- 
lages and towns. In France undoubtedly there were always 
cities of some importance. Country parishes contained several 
manses or farms of arable land around a common ])asture, 
where every one was bound by custom to feed his cattle. 

§ 17. The condition even of internal trade was hardly pref- 
erable to that of agriculture. There is not a vestige, perhaps, 
to be discovered for several centuries of any considerable manu- 
facture — I mean, of working up articles of common utility to 



582 DEARTH OF MANUFACTURES. Chap. IX. Part I. 

ail extent beyond what the necessities of an adjacent district 
required. Kich men kept domestic artisans among tlieir ser- 
vants ; even kings, in tlie ninth century, had their clotlaes 
made by the Avomen upon tlieir farms; but tlie peasantry must 
have been supplied with garments and implements of labor by 
purchase ; and every town, it cannot be doubted, had its 
weaver, its smith, and its carrier. But there were almost in- 
superable impediments to any extended traffic — the insecurity 
of movable wealth, and difficulty of accumulating it ; the 
ignorance of mutual wants ; the peril of robbery in conveying 
merchandise, and the certainty of extortion. In the domains 
of every lord a toll was to be paid in passing his bridge, or 
along his highway, or at his market. These customs, equit- 
able and necessary in their principle, became in practice op- 
pressive, because they were arbitrary, and renewed in every 
petty territory which the road might intersect. Several of 
Charlemagne's capitularies repeat complaints of these exac- 
tions, and endeavor to abolish such tolls as were not founded 
on prescri[)tion. One of them rather amusingly illustrates 
the modesty and moderation of the land-holders. It is enacted 
that no one shall be compelled to go out of his way in order to 
pay toll at a particular bridge, when he can cross the river 
more conveniently at another place. These provisions, like 
most others of that age, were unlikely to produce much 
amendment. It was only the milder species, however, of 
feudal lords who were content with the tribute of merchants. 
The more ravenous descended from their fortresses to pillage 
the wealthy traveller, or shared in the spoil of inferior plun- 
derers, whom they both prote(;ted and instigated. Proofs occur, 
even in the later periods of the Middle Ages, when govern- 
ment had regained its energy, and civilization had made con- 
siderable progress, of public robberies systematically per- 
petrated by men of noble rank. In the more savage times, 
before the twelfth century, they were probably too frequent 
to excite mucli attention. It was a custom in some places to 
waylay travellers, and not only to plunder, but to sell them as 
slaves, or compel them to pay a ransom. Harold, son of God- 
win, having been wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu, was im- 
prisoned by the lord, says an historian, according to the 
custom of that territory. Germany a])pears to have been, 
upon the whole, the country where downright robbery was most 
unscrupulously practised by the great. Their castles, erected 
on almost inaccessible heights among the woods, became the 
secure receptacles of predatory bands, who spread terror over 



Statk of Socikty. state OF FOHEIGN COMMERCE. 583 

the country. From these barbarian lords of the Dark Ages, 
as from a living model, the romances are said to have drawn 
their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry. 
Robbery, indeed, is the constant theme both of the capitularies 
and of tlie Anglo-Saxon laws ; one has more reason to wx)nder 
at the intrepid thirst of lucre, which induced a very few mer- 
chants to exchange the products of different regions, than to 
ask why no general spirit of commercial activity prevailed. 

Under all these circumstances it is obvious that very little 
Oriental commerce could have existed in these western coun- 
tries of Europe. Destitute as they have been created, speak- 
ing comparatively, of natural productions fit for exportation, 
their invention and industry are the great resources from 
which they can supply the demands of the East. IJefore 
any manufactures were established in Europe, her commer- 
cial intercourse with Egypt and Asia must of necessity have 
been very trifling ; because, whatever inclination she might 
feel to enjoy the luxuries of those genial regions, she wanted 
the means of obtaining them. It is not, therefore, necessary 
to rest the miserable condition of Oriental commerce upon 
the Saracen conquests, because the poverty of Europe is an 
adequate cause ; and, in fact,- what little traffic remained was 
carried on with no material inconvenience through the chan- 
nel of Constantinople. Venice took the lead m trading with 
Greece and more eastern countries. Amalfi had the second 
place in the commerce of those dark ages. These cities im- 
ported, besides natural productions, the fine clothes of Con- 
stantinople ; yet, as this traific seems to have been illicit, it 
was not probably extensive. Their exports were gold and 
silver, by which, as none was likely to return, the circulating 
money of Europe was probably less in the eleventh century 
than at the subversion of the Roman Empire ; furs, which 
W'Cre obtained from the Sclavonian countries ; and arms, the 
sale of wdiich to pagans or Saracens was vainly prohibited 
by Charlemagne and by the Holy See. A more scandalous 
traffic, and one that still more fitly called for prohibitory 
laws, Avas carried on in slaves. It is a humiliating proof of 
the degradation of Christendom, that the Venetians were re- 
duced to purchase the luxuries of Asia by supplying the 
slave-market of the Saracens. Their apology would perhaps 
have been, that these were purchased from their heathen 
neighbors ; but a slave-dealer was probably not very inquisi- 
tive as to the faith or origin of his victim. This trade was 
not peculiar to Venice. In England it was very common, 



584 GENERAL IMPROVEMENT. Chap. IX. Pabt I. 

even after the Conquest, to export slaves to Ireland, till, in 
the reign of Henry II., the Irish came to a non-importation 
agreement, which put a stop to the practice. 

§ 18. From this state of degradation and poverty all the 
countries of Europe have recovered, with a progression in 
some respects tolerably uniform, in others more unequal; 
and the course of their improvement, more gradual and less 
dependent upon conspicuous civil revolutions than their de- 
cline, affords one of the most interesting subjects into which 
a philosophical mind can inquii-e. The commencement of 
tliis restoration has usually been dated from about the close 
of the eleventh century ; though it is unnecessary to observe 
that the subject does not admit of any thing approximating 
to chronological accuracy. It may, therefore, be sometimes 
not improper to distinguish the first six of the ten centuries 
which the present work embraces under the appellation of 
the Dark Ages — an epithet wliich I do not extend to the 
twelfth and thre^ following. In tracing the decline of so- 
ciety from the subversion of the lioman Empire, we have 
been led, not without connection, from ignorance to supersti- 
tion, from superstition to vice and lawlessness, and from 
thence to general rudeness and poverty. I shall pursue an 
inverted order in passing along the ascending scale, and 
class the various improvements Avhich took place between 
the twelfth and fifteenth centuries under three principal 
heads, as they relate to the wealth, the manners, or the taste 
and learning of Europe. Different arrangements might 
probably be suggested, equally natural and convenient ; but 
in the disposition of to])ics that have not always an unbroken 
connection with each other, no method can be prescribed as 
absolutely more scientific than the rest. That which I have 
adopted appears to me as philosophical and as little liable to 
transitions as any otliei'. 



State of Society. PKOGKESS OF iMPKOVEMENT. 585 



PART II. 

§ 1. Progress of Commercial Improvement in Flanders, Germany, and England. 
§ 2. Baltic Trade: Hanseatic Towns. § 3. ItMpid Progress of English Trade. 
§ i. Intercourse with the South of Europe. § 5. Progress of Commerce in the 
Countries upon the Mediterranean Sea. § (i. Their Manufactures. §7. Inven- 
tion of the Mariner's Compass. §8. Maritime L.aws. §9. Usury: Money 
Dealings of the Jews. §10. Banking Companies. §11. Progress of Kefinenient 
in Manners. § 12. Domestic Architecture. § 1.3. Ecclesiastical Architecture. 
§ 14. State of Agriculture. § 15. Value of Money. § 10. Improvement of the 
Moral Character of Society : its Causes. § 17. Police. § IS. Changes in Reli- 
gious Opinion : various Sects. ^ It). Cliivalry : its Progress, Character, and InJiu 
ence. § 20. Causes of the Intellectual Improvement of European Societv. § 21 
(I.) The Studv of Civil Law. § 22. (II.) Institution of Universities: their Celeb 
rity. § 23. .Scholastic Philosophy. § 24. (III.) Cultivation of Modern Lan 
guages. § 25. Provenijal Poets. § 26. Norman Poets : French Prose Writers 
§ 27. Spanish. § 28. It.alian : early Poets in that Language. § 29. Dante. § .30 
Petrarch. § 31. "English Language: its Progress. § .32. Chaucer. § .33. (IV.) Ke 
vival of Classical Learning : Latin Writers of the Twelfth Century : Literature of 
the Fourteenth Century. §34. Greek Literature: its Restoration in Italy. 
§ 35. Invention of Printing. 

§ 1. The geographical position of Europe naturally divides 
its maritime commerce into two principal regions — one com- 
prehending those countries which border on the Baltic, the 
German, and the Atlantic oceans ; another, those situated 
around the Mediterranean Sea. During the four centuries 
which preceded the discovery of America, and especially the 
two former of them, this sei)aration was more remarkable 
than at present, inasmuch as their intercourse, either by land 
<n- sea, was extremely limited. To the first region belonged 
the N'etherlands, the coasts of France, Germany, and Scandi- 
navia, and the maritime districts of England. In the second 
we may class the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia, those 
of Provence and Languedoc, and the whole of Italy. 

The former, or northern division, was first animated by 
the woollen manufacture of Flanders. It is not easy either 
to discover the early beginnings of this, or to account for 
its rapid advancement. The fertility of that province and 
its facilities of interior navigation were doubtless necessary 
causes ; but tliere must have been some temporary encourage- 
ment from the personal character of its sovereigns, or other 
accidental circumstances. Several testimonies to the flourish- 
insr condition of Flemish manufactures occur in the twelfth 



586 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE Chap. IX. Part II. 

century, and some might perhaps be found even earlier.^ A 
writer of the thirteenth asserts tliat all the world was clothed 
from English wool wrought in Flanders. This, indeed, is 
an exaggerated vaunt; but the Flemish stuffs were probably 
sold wherever the sea or a navigable river permitted them 
to be carried. Cologne was the chief trading-city upon the 
Rhine ; and its merchants, who had been considerable even 
under the emperor Henry IV., established a factory at London 
in 1220. The woollen manufacture, notwithstanding frequent 
wars and the impolitic regulations of magistrates, continued 
to flourish in the Netherlands (for Brabant and Hainault 
shared it in some degree with Flanders), until England be- 
came not only capable of supplying her own demand, but a 
rival in all the marts of Europe. " All Christian kingdoms, 
and even the Turks themselves," says an historian of the 
sixteenth century, " lamented the desperate Avar between the 
Flemish cities and their Count Louis that broke out in 1380. 
For at that time Flanders was a market for the traders of all 
the world. Merchants from seventeen kingdoms had their 
settled domiciles at Bruges, besides strangers from almost 
unknown countries who repaired thither." During this war, 
and on all other occasions, the weavers both of Ghent and 
Bruges distinguished themselves by a democratical spirit, 
the consequence, no doubt, of their numbers and prosperity. 
Ghent was one of the largest cities in Europe, and, in the 
opinion of many, the best situated. But Bruges, though in 
circuit but half the former, was more splendid in its buildings, 
and the seat of far more trade ; being the great staple both 
for Mediterranean and northern merchandise. Antwerp, 
which early in the sixteenth century drew away a large part 
of this commerce from Bruges, was not considerable in the 
preceding ages ; nor were the towns of Zealand and Holland 
much noted except for their fisheries, though those provinces 
acquired in the fifteenth century some share of the woollen 
manufacture. 

For the first two centuries after the Conquest our English 
towns, as has been observed in a different place, made some 
forward steps towards improvement, thougb still very inferior 
to those of the Continent. Their commerce was almost con- 
fined to the exportation of avooI, the great staple commodity 
of England, upon which, more than any other, in its raw or 
manufactured state, our wealth had been founded. A woollen 

1 Macpherson's Anuals of Commerce, vol. i., p. 270. 



State OF Society. OF FLANDERS. 587 

manufacture, however, indisputably existed under Henry II. ; ^ 
it is noticed in regulations of Eichard I. ; and by the importa- 
tion of woad under John it may be inferred to have still 
flourished. The disturbances of the next reign, perhaps, or 
the rapid elevation of the Flemish towns, retarded its growth, 
though a remarkable law was passed by the Oxford Parlia- 
ment in 12G1, prohibiting the export of wool and the importa- 
tion of cloth. This, while it shows the deference paid by the 
discontented barons, who predominated in that Parliament, to 
their confederates the burghers, was evidently too premature 
to be enforced. We may infer from it, however, that cloths 
were made at home, though not sufficiently for the people's 
consumption. 

Prohibitions of the same nature, though with a different 
object, were frequently imposed on the trade between Eng- 
land and Flanders by Edward I. and his son. As their po- 
litical connections fluctuated, these princes gave full liberty 
and settlement to the Flemish merchants, or banished them 
at once from the country. Nothing could be more injurious 
to England than this arbitrary vacillation. The Flemings 
were in every respect our natural allies ; but besides those 
connections with France, the constant enemy of Flanders, into 
which both the Edwards occasionally fell, a mutual alien- 
ation had been produced by the trade of the former people 
with Scotland, a trade too lucrative to be resigned at the king 
of England's request — an early instance of that conflicting 
selfishness of belligerents and neutrals which was destined to 
aggravate the animosities and misfortunes of our own time. 

A more prosperous era began with Edward III., the father, 
as he may almost be called, of English commerce, a title not, 
indeed, more glorious, but by which he may, perhaps, claim 
more of our gratitude than as the hero of Crecy. In 1331 he 
took advantage of discontents among the manufacturers of 
Flanders to invite them as settlers into his dominions. Tliey 
brought the finer manufacture of woollen cloths, which had 
been unknown in England. The discontents alluded to re- 
sulted from the monopolizing spirit of their corporations, 
who oppressed all artisans without the pale of their commu- 
nity. The history of corporations brings home to our minds 
one cardinal truth, that political institutions have very fre- 

- Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, thinks that a colony of Flemings set- 
tled as early as this reign at Worsted, a village in that county, and immortalized its 
name by their maniifacture. It soon reached Norwich, though not conspicuous till 
the reign of Edward I . 



V 



588 CONTINENTAL MANUFACTUKES. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

quently but a relative and temporary usefulness, and that 
what forwarded improvement during one part of its course 
may prove to it in time a most pernicious obstacle. Corpo- 
rations in England, we may be sure, wanted nothing of their 
usiud character, and it cost Edward no little trou.ble to protect 
his colonists from the selfishness and from the blind national- 
ity of the vulgar. The emigration of Flemish weavers into 
England continued during this reign, and we find it mentioned 
at intervals for more than a century. 

C )mmerce now became, next to liberty, the leading object 
of Parliament. Eor the greater part of our statutes from 
the accession of Edward III. bear relation to this subject ; not 
always well devised, or liberal, or consistent, but by no means 
worse in those respects than such as have been enacted in sub- 
sequent ages. The occupation of a merchant became honor- 
able ; and, notwithstanding the natural jealousy of the two 
classes, he was placed, in some measure, on a footing with 
landed proprietors. By the statute of apparel in 37 Edward 
III., merchants and artificers who had five hundred pounds' 
value in goods and chattels might use the same dress as 
squires of one hundred pounds a year. And those who were 
worth more than this might dress like men of double that 
estate. Wool was still the principal article of export and 
source of revenue. Subsidies granted by every Parliament 
upon this article were, on account of the scarcity of money, 
commonly taken in kind. By degrees the exportation of 
woollen cloths increased so as to diminish that of the raw 
material, but the latter was not absolutely prohibited during 
the period under review, although some restrictions were 
impoi^ed upon it by Edward IV. For a much earlier statute, 
in the 11th of Edward III., making the. exportation of avooI a 
cai)ital felony, was in its terms provisional, until it should be 
otherwise ordered by the council ; and tlie king almost imme- 
diately set it aside. ^ 

A manufacturing district, as we see in our own country, 
sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighborhood. Ac- 
cordingly, the woollen manufacture spread from Flanders 
along the banks of the Ehine and into the northern provinces 
of France. In Germany the iirivileges conceded by Henry V. 
to the free cities, and especially to their artisans, gave a soul 
to industry ; though the central parts of the empire were, for 

•■* rt is worthy of notice thnt English wool was superior to any other for fineness 
diirinc tliese ages. An English fiock transported into Spain about 1348 is said to 
have been tlie source of the fine Spanish wool. 



State OF Society. BALTIC TRADE. 589 

many reasons, very ill calculated for commercial enterprise 
during the Middle Ages. But the French towns were never 
so much emancipated from arbitrary power as those of Ger- 
many or Flanders ; and the evils of exorbitant taxation, with 
those produced by the English wars, conspired to retard the 
advance of manufactures in France. 

§ 2. The manufactures of Flanders and England found a 
market, not only in these adjacent countries, but in a part of 
Europe which for many ages had ordy been known enough to 
l)e dreaded. In the middle of the eleventh century a native 
of Bremen, and a writer much superior to most others of his 
time, was almost entirely ignorant of the geography of the 
Baltic; doubting whether any one had reached Russia by that 
sea, and reckoning Esthonia and Courland among its islands.^ 
l>ut in one hundred years more the maritime regions of Meck- 
lenburg and Fomerania, inhabited l)y a tribe of heathen Scla- 
vonians, were subdued by some German princes ; and the 
Teutonic order some time afterwards, having conquered Frus- 
sia, extended a line of at least com[)arative civilization as far 
as the Gulf of Finland. The first town erected on the coasts 
of the Baltic Avas Liibeck, which owes its foundation to fldol- 
]ihus, count of Holstein, in 1140. After several vicissitudes 
it became independent of any sovereign but the emperor in 
the thirteenth century. Hamburg and Bremen, upon the other 
side of the Cimbric peninsula, emulated the prosperity of Lii- 
beck ; the former city purchased independence of its bishop in 
1225. A colony from Bremen founded Riga, in Livonia, 
about 1162. The city of Dantzic grew into importance about 
the end of the following century. Konigsberg Avas founded 
by Ottocar, king of Bohemia, in the same age. 

But the real importance of these cities is to be dated from 
their famous iinion into the Haiiseatic^ confederacy. The origin 
of this is rather obscure, but it may certainly be nearly referred 
in point of time to the middle of the thirteenth century, and 
accounted for by the necessity of mutual defence, which piracy 
by sea and pillage by land had taught the merchants of Ger- 
many. The nobles endeavored to obstruct the formation of 
this league, which indeed was in great measure designed to 
withstand their exactions. It powerfully maintained the in- 
fluence which the free imperial cities were at this time acquir- 
ing. Eighty of the most considerable places constituted the 

■* Adam Rremensis, df Situ I)aiii;i>, p. 13. (Klzcvir edit.) 

5 Deri\'ed from the ancient (jeiiiiun word Hanse, signifying an association for 
mutual support. 



590 BALTIC TRADE. Cuap. IX. Pakt II. 

Hanseatic Confederacy, divided into four colleges, whereof 
Liibeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Dantzic were the leading 
towns. Liibeck held the chief rank, and became, as it were, 
the patriarchal see of the league ; whose province it was to 
])reside in all general discussions for mercantile, political, or 
military purposes, and to carry them into execution. The 
league had four principal factories in foreign parts — at Lon- 
don, Bruges, Bergen, and Novgorod ; endowed by the sover- 
eigns of those cities with considerable privileges, to which 
every merchant belonging to a Hanseatic town was entitled. 
In England the German guildhall or factory was established 
by concession of Henry III. ; and in later periods the 
Hanse traders were favored among many others in the capri- 
cious vacillations of our mercantile policy. The English had 
also their factories on the Baltic coast as far as Prussia and in 
the dominions of Denmark. 

§ 3. This opening of a Northern market poAverfully accel- 
erated the growth of our own commercial opulence, especially 
after the woollen manufacture had begun to thrive. From 
about the middle of the fourteenth ceiitury we find continual 
evidehces of a rapid increase in wealth. Thus, in 13(33, Pic- 
ard, wlio had been lord mayor some years before, entertained 
Edward III. and the Black Prince, the kings of Erance, Scot- 
land, and Cyprus, wath many of the nobility, at his oavu house 
in the Vintry, and presented them wdth handsome gifts. 
Philpot, another eminent citizen in Richard II. 's time, when 
the trade of England was considerably annoyed by privateers, 
hired lUUO armed men, and despatched them to sea, where 
they took fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes. We find 
Richard obtaining a great deal from -private merchants and 
trading towns. In 1379 he got £5000 from London, 1000 
marks from Bristol, and in proportion from smaller places. 
In 13(S() London gave £4000 more, and 10,000 marks in 131)7. 
The latter sum w^as obtained also for the coronation of Henry 
VI. Xor were the contributions of individuals conteni[)tible, 
considering the high value of money. Hinde, a citizen of 
London, lent to Henry lY. £2000 in 1407, and Whittington 
one-half of that sum. The merchants of the staple advanced 
£4000 at the same time. Our commerce continued to be 
regularly and rapidly progressive during the fifteenth century. 
The famous Canynges of I>ristol, under Henry VI. and Ed- 
Avard IV., had ships of 900 tons burden. The trade and even 
the internal wealth of England reached so much higher a pitch 
in the reign of the last-mentioned king than at any former 



State OF Society. COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE. 591 

period, that we may perceive the wars of York and Lancaster 
to have produced no very serious effect on national jjrosperity. 
Some battles were doubtless sanguinary ; but the loss of lives 
in battle is soon repaired by a flourishing nation ; and the 
devastation occasioned by armies was both partial and transi- 
tory. 

§ 4. A commercial intercourse between these northern and 
southern regions of Europe began about the early part of the 
fourteenth century, or, at most, a little sooner. Until, indeed, 
the use of the magnet was thoroughly understood, and a com- 
petent skill in marine architecture as well as navigation 
acquired, the Italian merchants were scarce likely to attempt 
a voyage perilous in itself, and rendered more formidable by 
the imaginary difficulties which had been supposed to attend 
an expedition beyond the straits of Hercules. But the English, 
accustomed to their own rough seas, were always more intrepid, 
and probably more skilful navigators. Though it was ex- 
tremely rare, even in the fifteenth century, for an English 
trading-vessel to appear in the Mediterranean, yet a famous 
military armament, that destined for the crusade of Richard 
I., displayed at a very early time the seamanship of our 
countrymen. In the reign of Edward II. we find mention in 
Rymer's Collection of Genoese ships trading to Flanders and 
England. His son was very solicitous to preserve the friend- 
ship of that opulent republic ; and it is by his letters to his 
Senate, or by royal orders restoring ships unjustly seized, that 
we come by a knowledge of those facts which historians neg- 
lect to relate. Pisa shared a little in this traffic, and Venice 
more considerably ; but Genoa was beyond all competition at 
the head of Italian commerce in these seas during tlie four- 
teenth century. In the next, her general decline left it more 
open to her rival ; but I doubt whether Venice ever maintained 
so strong a connection with England. Through London and 
Bruges, their chief station in Flanders, the merchants of Italy 
and of Spain transported Oriental produce to the farthest ]iarts 
of the North. The inhabitants of the Baltic coast were stimu- 
lated by the desire of precious luxuries which they had never 
known ; and these wants, though selfish and frivolous, are the 
means by which nations acquire civilization, and the earth is 
rendered fruitful of its produce. As the carriers of this trade 
the Hanseatic merchants resident in England and FLanders 
derived profits through which eventually of course those coun- 
tries were enriched. It seems that the Italian vessels unloaded 
at the marts of London or Bruges, and that such part of their 



692 COMMERCE OF THE Chap. IX. Part II. 

cargoes as were intended for a more northern trade came there 
into the hands of the German merchants. In the reign of 
Henr}^ VI. England carried on a pretty extensive traffic with 
the countries around the Mediterranean, for whose commodi- 
ties her wool and woollen cloths enabled her to pay. 

§ 5. The commerce of the southern division, though it did 
not, I think, produce more extensively beneficial effects upon 
the progress of society, was both earlier and more splendid 
than that of England and the neighboring countries. Besides 
Venice, which has been mentioned already, Amalh kept up the 
commercial intercourse of Christendom with the Saracen coun- 
tries before the first crusade. It Avas the singular fate of this 
city to have filled up the interval between two periods of civili- 
zation, in neither of which she Avas destined to be distinguished. 
Scarcely known before the end of the sixth century, Amalfi 
ran a brilliant career as a free and trading republic, which was 
cliecked by the arms of a conqueror in the middle of the 
twelfth. Since her subjugation by Eoger, king of Sicily, the 
name of a people who for a while connected Europe Avith Asia 
has hardly been repeated, except for tAvo discoveries falsely 
imputed to them — those of the Pandects and of the compass. 

But the decline of Amalfi Avas amply compensated to the 
rest of Italy by the constant elevation of Pisa, Genoa, and 
Venice in the twelfth and ensuing ages. The Crusades led 
immediately to this growing prosperity of the commercial 
cities. Besides the profit accruing from so many naval arma- 
ments which they supplied, and the continual passage of 
private adventurers in their vessels, they Avere enabled to open 
a more extensive channel of Oriental traffic than had hitherto 
been knoAvn. These three Italian republics enjoyed immuni- 
ties in the Christian principalities of Syria ; possessing se])arate 
quarters in Acre, Tripoli, and otlier cities, where they were 
governed by their own laws and magistrates. Though the 
progress of commerce must, fi'om the condition of European 
industry, have been sIoav, it Avas uninterrupted ; and the settle- 
ments in Palestine were becoming important as factories, an 
use of Avhich Godfrey and Urban little dreamed, when they 
Avere lost through tlie guilt and imprudence of their inhabit- 
ants. Villani laments the- injury sustained by commerce in 
consequence of the capture of Acre ; but the loss Avas soon 
retrieved, not perhaps by Pisa and Genoa, but by Venice, Avho 
formed connections with the Saracen governments, and main- 
tained her commercial intercourse Avith Syria and Egypt by 
their license, though subject probably to heaA^ exactions. 



State of Society. MEDITERRANEAN COUNTRIES. 593 

Saiiuto, a Venetian author at the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, has left a curious account of the Levant trade which 
his countrymen carried on at that time. Their imports it is 
easy to guess, and it appears that timber, brass, tin, and lead, 
as well as the precious metals, were exported to Alexandria, 
besides oil, saffron, and some of the productions of Italy, and 
even wool and woollen cloths. The European side of the 
account had therefore become respectable. 

The commercial cities enjoyed as great privileges at Con- 
stantinople as in Syria, and they bore an eminent part in the 
vicissitudes of the Eastern Empire. After the capture of Con- 
stantinople by the Latin crusaders, the Venetians, having been 
concerned in that conquest, became, of course, the favored 
traders under the new dynasty ; possessing their own district 
in the city, with their magistrate or podesta, appointed at Ven- 
ice, and subject to the parent republic. When the Greeks 
recovered the seat of their empire, the Genoese, Avho, from 
jealousy of their rivals, had contributed to that revolution, 
obtained similar immunities. This powerful and enterprising 
state, in the fourteenth century, sometimes the ally, sometimes 
the enemy, of the Byzantine Court, maintained its independent 
settlement at Pera. From thence she spread her sails into the 
Euxine, and, planting a colony at Calfa, in the Crimea, ex- 
tended a line of commerce with the interior regions of Asia 
which even the skill and spirit of our own times has not been 
able to revive. 

The French })ruvinces which border on the Mediterranean 
Sea partook in the advantages which it offered. Not only 
Marseilles, whose trade had continued in a certain degree 
througliout the worst ages, but Narbonne, Nismes, and espe- 
cially Montpellier, were distinguished for commercial prosper- 
ity. A still greater activity prevailed in Catalonia. From 
the middle of the thirteenth century Barcelona began to emu- 
late the Italian cities in lioth the branches of naval energy, 
war and commerce. Engaged in frequent and severe hostili- 
ties with Genoa, and sometimes with Constantinople, while 
their vessels traded to every part of the Mediterranean, and 
even of the English Channel, the Catalans miglit justly be 
reckoned among the first of maritime nations. The commerce 
of Barcelona has never since attained so great a height as in 
tlie fifteenth century. 

§ 6. The introduction of a silk maiuifacture at Palermo by 
Roger Guiscard, in 1148, gave, perhaps, the earliest impulse 
to the industry of Italy. Nearly about the same time the 



594 THE MARINER'S COMPASS. Chap. IX. Part II. 

Genoese plundered two ^loorisli cities of Spain, from which 
they derived tlie same art. In the next age tlas became a 
stai)le manufacture of the Lombard and Tuscan republics, 
and the cultivation of mulberries was enforced by their laws. 
Woollen stuffs, though the trade was, perhaps, less conspicu- 
ous than that of Flanders, and though many of the coarser 
kinds were imported from thence, employed a multitude of 
workmen in Italy, Catalonia, and the south of France. Among 
the trading companies into Avhich the middling ranks were 
distributed, those concerned in silk and woollens were most 
numerous and honorable. 

§ 7. A pro})erty of a natural substance, long overlooked, 
even though it attracted observation by a different ]ieculiarity, 
has influenced by its accidental discovery the fortunes of man- 
kind more than all the deductions of philosophy. It is, per- 
haps, impossible to ascertain the epoch Avhen the polarity of 
the magnet was first known in Europe. The common opinion, 
which ascribes its discovery to a citizen of Amalfi in the four- 
teenth century, is undoubtedly erroneous. Guiot de Provins, 
a French poet, Avho lived about the year 1200, or at the latest 
under St. Louis, describes it in the most imequivocal language. 
James de Vitry, a bishop in I'alestine before the middle of the 
thirteenth century, and Guido Guinizzelli, an Italian poet of 
the same time, are equally explicit. The French as well as 
Italians claim the discovery as their own ; but whether it was 
due to either of these nations, or rather learned from their in- 
tercourse with the Saracens, is not easily to be ascertained. 
For some time, perhaps, even this wonderful improvement in 
the art of navigation might not be universally adopted by ves- 
sels sailing in the Mediterranean, and accustomed to their old 
S3'stem of observations. But when it became more established, 
it naturally inspired a more fearless spirit of adventure. It 
was not, as has been mentioned, till the beginning of the four- 
teenth century that the Genoese and other nations around that 
inland sea steered into the Atlantic Ocean towards England 
and Flanders. This intercourse with the Northern countries 
enlivened their trade with the Levant by the exchange of pro- 
ductions which Spain and Italy do not supply, and enriched 
the merchants by means of whose capital the exports of 
London and of Alexandria were conveyed into each other's 
harbors. 

§ 8. The usual risks of navigation, and those incident to 
commercial adventure, produce a variety of questions in ev- 
ery system of jurisprudence, which, though always to be 



State OF Society. MARITIME LAWS. 595 

determined, as far as possible, by prinf'i}»les of natural jus- 
tice, must in many cases depend upon established customs. 
These' customs of maritime law were anciently reduced into 
a code by the Rhodians, and the Roman emperors preserved 
or reformed the constitutions of that republic. It would be 
hard to say how far the tradition of this early jurisprudence 
survived the decline of commerce in the darker ages ; but 
after it began to recover itself, necessity suggested, or recol- 
lection proinpted a scheme of regulations resembling in some 
degree but much more enlarged than those of antiquity. This 
was formed into a written code, " 11 Consolato del Mare," not 
much earlier, probably, than the middle of the thirteenth cen- 
tury ; and its promulgation seems rather to have proceeded 
from the citizens of Barcelona than from those of Pisa or 
Venice, who have also claimed to be the first legislators of the 
sea. Besides regulations simply mercantile, this system has 
defined the mutual rights of neutral and belligerent vessels, 
and thus laid the basis of the positive law of nations in its 
most important and disputed cases. The King of France and 
Count of Provence solemnly acceded to this maritime code, 
which hence acquired a binding force within the Mediterra- 
nean Sea ; and in most respects the law merchant of Europe 
is at present conformable to its provisions. A set of regula- 
tions, chiefly borrowed from the " Consolato," was compiled in 
France under the reign of Louis IX., and prevailed in their 
own country. These have been denominated the laws of 
Oleron, fi'om an idle story that they were enacted by Richard 
I. while his expedition to the Holy Land lay at anchor in that 
island. Kor was the North without its peculiar code of mari- 
time jurisprudence — namely, the ordinances of Wisbuy, a 
town in the isle of Gothland, principally compiled from those 
of Oleron, before the year 1400, by which the Baltic traders 
were governed. 

There was abundant reason for establishing among mari- 
time nations some theory of mutual rights, and for securing 
the redress of injuries, as far as possible, by means of acknowl- 
edged tribunals. In that state of barbarous anarchy which so 
long resisted the coercive authority of civil magistrates the 
sea held out even more temptation and more impunity than the 
land ; and when the laws had regained their sovereignty, and 
neither robbery nor private warfare was any longer tolerated, 
there remained that great common of mankind, unclaimed by 
any king, and the liberty of the sea was another name for the 
security of plunderers. A pirate, in a well-armed quick-sail- 



596 PIRACY. — LAW OF REPRISALS. Chap. IX. Pakt IL 

ing vessel, must feel, I suppose, the enjoyments of his exemp- 
tion from control more exquisitely than any other free-booter ; 
and darting along the bosom of tlie ocean, under the impartial 
radiance of the heavens, may deride the dark concealments 
and hurried flights of the forest robber. His occupation is, 
indeed, extinguished by the civilization of later ages, or con- 
lined to distant climates. But in the tliirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries a rich vessel was never secure from attack ; and 
neither restitution nor punishment of the criminals was to be 
obtained from governments who sometimes feared the plun- 
derer and sometimes connived at the offence. Mere piracy, 
however, was not the only danger. The maritime towns of 
Flanders, France, and England, like the free republics of 
Italy, prosecuted their own quarrels by arms, without asking 
the leave of their respective sovereigns. This practice, ex- 
actly analogous to that of private war in the feudal system, 
more than once involved the kings of France and England in 
hostility.® But where the quarrel did not proceed to such a 
length as absolutely to engage two opposite towns, a modifica- 
tion of this ancient right of revenge formed part of the regu- 
lar law of nations, under the name of reprisals. Whoever was 
plundered or injured by the inhabitant of another town ob- 
tained authority from his own magistrates to seize the property 
of any other person belonging to it, until his loss should be 
compensated. This law of reprisal was not confined to mari- 
time places; it prevailed in Lombardy, and probably in the 
German cities. Thus, if a citizen of Modena were robbed by 
a Bolognese, he complained to the magistrates of the former 
city, who represented the case to those of Bologna, demanding 
redress. If this were not immediately granted, letters of re- 
prisals were issued to plunder the territory of Bologna till the 
injured party should l)e reimbursed by sale of the spoil. Ed- 
ward III. remonstrates, in an instrument publislied by Rymer, 
against letters of marque granted by the king of Aragon to 
one Berenger de la Tone, who had been robbed by an English 
pirate of £2(100, alleging that, inasmuch as he had always 
been ready to give redress to the party, it seemed to liis coun- 
sellors that there was no just cause for reprisals upon the 
king's or his subjects' property. This passage is so far curi- 

s The Clinque Ports and other trading towns of Enghmd were in a constant state 
of Iiostility with their opposite neiglibors during tlie reigns of Edward I. and II. 
One nuglit ([iiote almost lialf the instruments in llynier in proof of these conflicts, 
and of those with the mariners of Norway and Denmark. Sometimes mutual envy 
produced frays between dillerent English towns. Thus in 125-1 the Wiuchelsea man- 
ners attacked a Yarmouth galley, and killed some of her men. 



State OF Society. GREAT PROFITS OF TRADE. 597 

ous as it asserts the existence of a customary law of nations, 
the knowledge of which was already a sort of learning. Sir 
E. Coke speaks of this right of private reprisals as if it still 
existed; and, in fact, there are instances of granting such 
letters as late as the reign of Charles I. 

A practice founded on the same principles as reprisal, though 
rather less violent, was that of attaching the goods or persons 
of resident foreigners for the debts of their countrymen. This, 
indeed, in England, was not confined to foreigners until the 
statute of Westminster I., c. 23, which enacts that " no 
stranger who is of this realm shall be distrained in any town 
or market for a debt wherein he is neither principal nor 
surety." Henry III. had previously granted a charter to the 
burgesses of Liibeck that they should " not be arrested for the 
debt of any of their countryinen, unless the magistrates of 
Liibeck neglected, to compel payment." But, by a variety of 
grants from Edward II., the ])rivileges of English subjects 
under the statute of Westminster were extended to most 
foreign nations. This unjust responsibility had not been con- 
fined to civil cases. One of a company of Italian merchants, 
the Spini, having killed a man, the officers of justice seized 
the bodies and effects of all the rest. 

§ 9. If under all these obstacles, whether created by bar- 
barous manners, by national prejudice, or by the fraudulent 
and arbitrary measures of princes, the merchants of different 
countries became so opulent as almost to rival the ancient 
nobility, it must be ascribed to the greatness of their commer- 
cial profits. The trading companies possessed either a positive 
or a virtual monopoly, and held the keys of those Eastern 
regions, for the luxuries of which the progressive refinement 
of manners produced an increasing demand. It is not easy to 
determine the average rate of profit ; but we know that the 
interest of money was exceedingly high throughout the Middle 
Ages. At Verona, in 1228, it was fixed by law at twelve and 
a half per cent ; at Modena, in 1270, it seems to have been as 
high as twenty. The republic of Genoa, towards the end of 
the fourteenth century, when Italy had grown wealthy, paid 
only from seven to ten per cent to her creditors. But in 
France and England the rate was far more oppressive. An 
ordinance of Philip the Eair, in 1311, allows twenty per cent 
after the first year of the loan. Under Henry III., according 
to Matthew Paris, the debtor paid ten per cent every two 
months ; but this is absolutely incredible as a general prac- 
tice. This was not merely owing to scarcity of money, but to 



598 JEWS' MONET DEALINGS. Chap. IX. Part IT. 

tiie discouragement which a strange ])rejudiee opposed to one 
of the most useful and legitimate branches of commerce. 
Usury, or lending money for protit, was treated as a crime by 
tlie theologians of the ^liddle Ages ; and though the supersti- 
tion has been eradicated, some part of the prejudice remains 
in our legislation. This trade in money, and indeed a great 
part of inland trade in general, had originally fallen to the 
Jews, who were noted for their usury so early as the sixth 
century.'^ For several subsequent ages they continued to em- 
ploy their capital and industry to the same advantage, with 
little molestation from the clergy, who always tolerated their 
avowed and national infidelity, and often with some encourage- 
ment from princes. In the twelfth century we find them not 
only possessed of landed property in Languedoc, and cultivat- 
ing the studies of medicine and Rabbinical literature in their 
own academy at jNIontpellier, under the protection of tlie Count 
of Toulouse, but invested with civil olii(;es. In Spain they 
were placed by some of the municipal laws on the footing of 
Christians, witli respect to the composition for their lives, and 
seem in no other European country to have been so numerous 
or considerable. The diligence and expertness of this people 
in all ])ecuniary dealings recommended them to princes Avho 
were solicitous about the improvement of their revenue. Two 
kings of Castile, Alonzo XL and Peter the Cruel, incurred 
much odium by employing Jewish ministers in their treasury. 
But in other parts of Europe their condition had, before that 
time, begun to change for the worse — partly from the fanati- 
cal spirit of the Crusades, which jorompted the populace to 
massacre, and partly from the jealousy which their opulence 
excited. Kings, in order to gain money and popidarity at once, 
abolislied the debts due to tlie children of Israel, except a 
part which they retained as the price of their bounty. One is 
at a loss to conceive the process of reasoning in an ordinance of 
St. Louis, where, " for the salvation of his own soul and those of 
his ancestors, he releases to all Christians a tliird part of what 
was owing by them to Jews." Not content witii such edicts, 
the kings of France sometimes banished the whole nation from 
their dominions, seizing their effects at the same time ; and a 
season of alternative severity and toleration continued till, 
under Charles VI., they were finally expelled from the kingdom, 
where they never afterwards possessed any legal settlement. 
They were expelled from England under Edward I., and never 

7 Greg. Turon., 1. iv. 



State OF Society. BANKS OF GENOA AND OTUEKS. 599 

obtained any legal permission to reside till the time of Crom- 
well. This decline of the Jews was owing to the transference 
of their trade in money to other hands. In the early part of 
tlie thirteenth century the merchants of Lombardy and of the 
south of France took up the business of remitting money by 
bills of exchange, and of making proht upon loans. The 
utility of this was found so great, especially by the Italian 
clergy, wlio thus in an easy manner drew the income of their 
transalpine benefices, that, in spite of much obloquy, the 
Lombard usurers established themselves in every country, and 
the general progress of commerce wore off the bigotry that 
had obstructed their reception. A distinction was made be- 
tween moderate and exorbitant interest; and though the 
casuists did not accpiiesce in this legal regulation, yet it satis- 
fied, even in superstitious times, the consciences of provident 
traders,^ The Italian bankers were frequently allowed to 
farm the customs in England, as a security, perhaps, for loans 
which were not very punctually repaid. In 1345 the Bardi at 
Florence, the greatest company in Italy, became bankrupt, 
Edward III. owing them, in piincipal and interest, 900,000 
gold florins. Another, the Peruzzi, failed at the same time, 
being creditors to Edward for 600,000 florins. The King of 
Sicily owed 100,000 florins to each of these bankers. Their 
failure involved, of course, a multitude of Florentine citizens, 
and was a heavy misfortune to the state. 

§ 10. The earliest bank of deposit, instituted for the accom- 
modation of private merchants, is said to have been that of 
Barcelona, in 1401. The banks of Venice and Genoa were of a 
different description. Although the former of these two has 
the advantage of greater antiquity, having been formed, as we 
are told, in the twelfth century, yet its early history is not so 
clear as that of Genoa, nor its political importance so remark- 
able, however similar might be its origin. During the wars of 
Genoa in the fourteenth .century, she had borrowed large sums 
of private citizens, to whom the revenues were pledged for 
repayment. The republic of Florence had set a recent, though 
not a very encouraging, example of a public loan, to defray the 

8 Usury was looked upon with horror by our English divines long after the Refor- 
mation. 

One species of usury, and that of the highest importance to commerce, was always 
permitted, on account of the ri.sk tliat attended it. This was marine insurance, 
whicli could not have existed until money was considered, in itself, as a source of 
profit. Tlie earliest regulations on the subject of insurance are those of Barcelona 
ill 14.33; but the practice was, of course, earlier tlian these, though not of great antiq- 
uity. It is not mentioned in the " Consolato del Mare," nor in any of the Hanseatic 
laws of the fourttcuth ceutury. 



600 DOMESTIC EXPENDITUKE. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

expense of lier war against Mastino della Scala, in 1336. The 
chief mercantile firms, as well as individual citizens, furnished 
money on an assignment of the taxes, receiving fifteen per cent 
interest, which appears to have been above the rate of private 
usury. The state was not unreasonably considered a worse 
debtor than some of her citizens, for in a few years these loans 
were consolidated into a general fund, or tnonte, with some 
deduction from the capital and a great diminution of interest ; 
so tliat an original debt of one hundred florins sold only for 
twenty-five. But I have not found that these creditors formed 
at Florence a corporate body, or took any part, as such, in the 
affairs of the re[)ublic. The case was different at Genoa. As 
a security, at least, for their interest, the subscribers to public 
loans were permitted to receive the produce of the taxes by 
their own collectors, paying the excess into the treasury. The 
number and distinct classes of these subscribers becoming at 
length inconvenient, they were formed, about the year 1407, 
into a single corporation, called the Bank of St. George, Avhich 
was from that time the sole national creditor and nujrtgagee. 
The government of this was intrusted to eight protectors. It 
soon became almost independent of the state. Every Senator, 
on his admission, swore to maintain the privileges of the bank, 
which were confirmed by the pope,, and even by the emperor. 
The bank interposed its advice in every measure of government, 
and generally, as is admitted, to the public advantage. It 
equipped armaments at its own expense, one of which subdued 
the island of Corsica ; and this acquisition, like those of our 
great Indian corporation, was long subject to a company of 
merchants, without any interference of the mother country. 

§ 11. The increasing wealth of Europe, whether derived from 
internal ini})rovenient or foreign commerce, displayed itself in 
more expensive consumption, and greater refinements of domes- 
tic life. But these effects were for a long time very gradual. 
It is not till the latter half of the thirteenth century that an 
accelerated impulse appears to be given to society. The just 
government and suppression of disorder under St. Louis, and 
the peaceful temper of his brother Alfonso, count of Toulouse 
and Poitou, gave France leisure to avail herself of her admir- 
able fertility. England, that to a soil not greatly inferior to 
that of France united the inestimable advantage of an insular 
position, and was invigorated, above all, by her free constitu- 
tion and the steady industriousness of her people, rose with a 
pretty uniform motion from the time of Edward I. Italy, 
though the better days of freedom had passed away in most 



I 



State OF Society SUMPTUARY LAWS. 601 

of her republics, made a rapid transition from simplicity to re- 
finement. " In tliose times," says a writer about the year loOO, 
speaking of the age of Frederick II., "the manners of the Ital- 
ians were rude. A man and his wife ate oft tlie same plate. 
There were no wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or 
two drinking-cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were 
unknown ; a servant held a torcli during supper. The clothes 
of men were of leather unlined : scarcely any gold or silver Avas 
seen on their dress. The common people ate flesh but three 
times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Many did 
not drink wine in summer. A small stock of coru seemed 
riches. The portions of women were small ; their dress, even 
after marriage, was simple. The pride of men was to be well 
13rovided with arms and horses ; that of the nobility to have 
lofty towers, of which all the cities in Italy were full. But 
now frugality has been changed for sumptuousness ; everything 
exquisite is sought after in dress — gold, silver, pearls, silks, 
and rich furs. Foreign wines and rich meats are required. 
Hence usury, rapine, fraud, tyranny,'"^ etc. This passage is 
supported by other testimonies nearly of the same time. The 
conquest of iSTaples by Charles of Anjou, in 1266, seems to have 
been the epoch of increasing luxury througliout Italy. His 
Provencal knights, with their plumed helmets and golden col- 
lars, the chariot of his queen covered Avith blue velvet and 
sprinkled with lilies of gold, astonished the citizens of Naples. 
Provence had enjoyed a long tranquillity, the natural source of 
luxurious magnificence ; and Italy, now liberated from the yoke 
of the empire, soon reaped the same fruit of a condition more 
easy and peaceful than had been her lot for several ages. 

Througliout the fourteenth century there continued to be a 
rapid but steady progression in England of what we may de- 
nominate elegance, improvement, or luxury ; and if this was 
for a time suspended in France, it must be ascribed to the 
unusual calamities which befell that country under Philip of 
Valois and his son. Just before the breaking out of the En- 
glish Avars an excessive fondness for dress is said to have dis- 
tinguished not only the higher ranks, but the burghers, Avhose' 
foolish emulation at least indicates their easy circumstances. 
Modes of dress hardly, perhaps, deserve our notice on their 
OAvn account ; yet, so far as their universal prevalence Avas a 
symptom of diffused Avealth, we sliould not OA^erlook either the 
invectives bestoAved by tlie clergy on the fantastic extrava- 

3 Ricobaklus Ferrarensis, apud Blurat. Dissert.^ 23. Fraucisc. Pippiuus, ibidem. 



602 KEFINEMENT AND LUXURY. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

gances of fashion, or the sumptuary laws by which it was 
endeavored to restrain them. 

Tiie principle of sumptuary laAvs was partly derived from 
the small republics of antiquity, which might, perhaps, require 
that security for puljlic spirit and equal rights — partly from 
the austere and injudicious theory of religion disseminated by 
the clergy. These prejudices united to render all increase of 
general comforts odious under tlie name of luxury ; and a third 
motive, more powerful than either, the jealousy with which 
the great regard anything like imitation in those beneath 
them, co-operated to produce a sort of restrictive code in the 
laws of Europe. Some of those regulations are more ancient ; 
but the chief part were enacted, both in France and England, 
during the fourteenth century, extending to expenses of the 
table as well as apparel. The lirst statute of this descrip- 
tion in our own country was, however, repealed the next year ; " 
and subsequent provisions were entirely disregarded by a na- 
tion wluch valued liberty and commerce too much to obey laws 
conceived in a spirit hostile to both. Laws, indeed, designed 
by those governments to restrain the extravagance of their 
subjects may well justify the severe indignation which Adam 
Smith has poured upon all such interference with private 
expenditure. 

Towards the latter part of the fourteenth century there was 
more refinement and luxury in Italy than in any other part of 
Europe. In France the burghers, and even the inferior gentry, 
were for the most part in a state of poverty at this period, 
which they concealed by an affectation of ornament ; while our 
English yeomanry and tradesmen were more anxious to invigo- 
rate their bodies by a generous diet than to dwell in well-fur- 
nished houses, or to find comfort in cleanliness and elegance. 
The German cities, however, had acquired with liberty the 
spirit of improvement and industry. From the time that 
Henry V. admitted their artisans to the privileges of free 
burghers they became more and more prosperous ; while the 
steadiness and frugality of the German character compensated 
for some disadvantages arising out of their inland situation. 
Spire, Nuremberg, Eatisbon, and Augsburg were not, indeed, 
like the rich markets of London and Bruges, nor could their 
burghers rival the princely merchants of Italy ; but they en- 

1" 37 Edward HI., Hep. 3S Edwiird III. Several other .statute.s of a similar nature 
were passed in this and the ensuing reign. In France, there were sumptuary laws as 
old as Charlemagne, proliibiting or taxing tlie use of furs; but the first extensive 
regulation was under I'hilip tlie V:\\v. These attempts to restrain what cannot be 
restrained continued even down to 1700. 



State OF SociETi'. CIRCULxVR TOWEliS. 003 

joyed the blessings of competence diffused over a large class 
of industrious freemen, and in the fifteenth century one of the 
politest Italians could extol their splendid and well-furnished 
dwellings, their rich apparel, their easy and affluent mode of 
living, the security of their rights and just equality of their 
laws.^^ 

§ 12. No chapter in the history of national manners Avould 
illustrate so well, if duly executed, the progress of social life 
as that dedicated to domestic architecture. The fashions of 
dress and of amusements are generally capricious and irre- 
ducible to rule ; but every change in the dwellings of man- 
kind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately mansion, 
has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness, 
comfort, or magnificence. 

The most ancient buildings which we can trace in this island, 
after the departure of the llomans, were circular towers of no 
great size, whereof many remain in Scotland, erected either 
on a natural eminence or on an artificial mound of earth. Such 
are Conisborough Castle in Yorkshire, and Castleton in Derby- 
shire. To the lower chambers of those gloomy keeps tliere 
was no admission of light or air except through long narrow 
loop-holes and an aperture in the roof. Regular windows were 
made in the upper apartments. Were it not for the vast 
thickness of the walls, and some marks of attention both to 
convenience and decoration in these structures, we might be 
induced to consider them as rather intended for security during 
the transient inroad of an enemy tlian for a chieftain's usual 
residence. They bear a close resemblance, except by their 
circular form and more insulated situation, to the peels, or 
square towers of three or four stories, which are still found 
contiguous to ancient mansion-houses in the northern counties, 
and seem to have been designed for places of refuge, though 
many of them were also built for residence. 

In course of time, tlie barons who owned these castles began 
to covet a more comfortable dwelling. The keep was either 
much enlarged, or altogether relinquished as a place of resi- 
dence, except in time of siege ; while more convenient apart- 
ments were sometimes erected in the tower of entrance, over 
the great gate-way, Avhich led to the inner ballium, or court- 
yard. The windows in this class of castles were still little 
better than loop-holes on the basement story, but in the upper 
rooms often large and beautifully ornamented, though always 

" jEneas Sylvius, de Moiibus Gennanorum. This treatise is an amplified pane- 
gyric upon Germany, and contains several curious passages. 



604 PROGRESS OF Chap. IX. Part II. 

looking in^yard to the court. Edward I. introduced a more 
s})lendid and convenient style of castles, containing many- 
habitable towers, with communicating apartments. Conway 
and Carnarvon will be familiar examples. The next innovation 
was the castle-palace — of which Windsor, if not quite the 
earliest, is the most magnificent instance. Alnivick, Naworth, 
Harewood, Spoft'orth, Kenilworth, and Warwick, were all built 
upon this scheme during the fourteenth century, but subse- 
quent enlargements have rendered caution necessary to distin- 
guish their original remains. The provision for defence became 
now, however, little more than nugatory ; large arched win- 
dows, like those of cathedrals, were introduced into halls, and 
this change in architecture manifestly bears witness to the 
cessation of baronial wars and the increasing love of splendor 
in the reign of Edward III. 

To these succeeded the castellated houses of the fifteenth 
century — such as Herstmonceux, in Sussex ; Haddon Hall, in 
Derbyshire ; and the older part of Knowle, in Kent.-^^ They 
resembled fortified castles in their strong gate-ways, their 
turrets and battlements, to erect which a royal license was 
necessary; but their defensive strength could onl}^ have availed 
against a sudden affray or attempt at forcible dispossession. 
They were alwaj'^s built round one or two courtyards, the cir- 
cumference of the first, when they were two, being occupied 
by the offices and servants' rooms, that of the second by the 
state apartments. Regular quadrangular houses, not castel- 
lated, were sometimes built during the same age, and under 
Henry VII. became universal in the superior style of domestic 
architecture. The quadrangular form, as well from security 
and convenience as from imitation of conventual houses, which 
were always constr\icted upon that model, was generally pre- 
ferred — even where the dwelling-house, as indeed was usual, 
only took up one side of the enclosure, and the remaining three 
contained the offices, stables, and farm-buildings, with walls of 
comnumication. Several very old parsonages apjiear to have 
been built in this manner. ^^ A great part of England affords 
no stone fit for building, and the vast, though unfortunately 
not inexhaustible, resources of her oak forests were easily 
applied to less durable and magnificent structures. A frame 

1- The ruins of Herstnionceux arc, I believe, tolerably authentic remains of Henry 
VI. 's age, but only a part of Haddon Hall is of the tifteentli century. 

13 The quadraniriiiar foini, however, was nut ancient — Aydon, Northumberland; 
Little Wenham Hall, SuHblk; JIarkenfield Hall, Yorkshire; and Great Chalfield, 
Wilts — ransin^ in date from the latter half of the thirteenth century to the latter 
lialf of the tifleeuth c^.'Utury — ^ire not quadrangular. Others might b. liuuied. 



State OF Society. CIVIL ARCniTECTUKE 605 

of massive timber, independent of walls and resembling the 
inverted linll of a large ship, formed the skeleton, as it were, 
of an ancient hall — the principal beams springing from the 
ground naturally curved, and forming a Gothic arch overhead. 
The intervals of these Avere filled up with horizontal planks ; 
but in the earlier buildings, at least in some districts, no part 
of the walls was of stone. Stone houses are, however, men- 
tioned as belonging to citizens of London even in the reign 
of Henry II. ; and, though not often, perhaps, regularly heAvn 
stones, yet those scattered over the soil or dug from flint quar- 
ries, bound together with a very strong ana durable cement, 
were employed in the construction of manorial houses, espe- 
cially in the western counties and other parts where that material 
is easily procured. Gradually, even in timber-buildings, the 
intervals of the main beams, which now became perpendicular, 
not throwing oft" their curved springers till they reached a 
considerable heiglit, were occupied by stone walls, or, where 
stone was expensive, by mortar or plaster, intersected by hor- 
izontal or diagonal beams, grooved into the principal piers. 
This mode of building continued for a long time, and is still 
familiar to our eyes in the older streets of the metropolis and 
other towns, and in many parts of the country, but it did not 
come into general use till the reign of Henry VI. The use of 
brick in building seems to have fallen into comparative disuse ; 
but so simple an art as making bricks can hardly have been 
lost. We have an instance of an early edifice constructed 
chiefly of this material in Little Wenham Hall, in Suffolk, 
which was erected about 1270 ; but many considerable liouses 
as well as public buildings were erected with bricks during his 
reign and that of Edward IV., chiefly in the eastern counties, 
where the deficiency of stone was most experienced. Queen's 
College and Clare Hall, at Cambridge, and part of Eton Col- 
lege, are subsisting Avitnesses to the durability of the material 
as it was then employed. 

It is an error to suppose that the English gentry were lodged 
in stately or even in well-sized houses. Generally speaking, 
their dwellings were almost as inferior to those of their descend- 
ants in capacity as they were in convenience. The usual ar- 
rangement consisted of an entrance-passage running through 
the house, with a hall on one side, a parlor beyond, and one or 
two chambers above ; and on the opposite side, a kitchen, pan- 
try, and other offices. Sucli was the ordinary manor-house of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Larger structures were 
erected by men of great estates after the wars of the Roses ; 



606 INVENTION OF CHIMNEYS. CuAP. IX. Paiit II. 

but I should conceive it difficult to name a house in England, 
still inhabited by a gentleman and not belonging to tlie order- 
of castles, the princi})al apartments of which are older than the 
reign of Henry VII. The instances at least must be extremely 
few." 

France by no means appears to have made a greater progress 
than our own country in domestic architecture. Except forti- 
tied castles, I do not find any considerable dwellings mentioned 
before tlie reign of Charles VII., and very few of so early a 
date. Even in Italy, where, from the size of her cities and 
social refinements of her inhabitants, greater elegance and 
splendor in building were justly to be expected, the domestic 
architecture of the Middle Ages did not attain any perfection. 
In several towns the houses were covered with thatch, and 
suffered consequently from destructive fires. 

The two most essential improvements in architecture dur- 
ing this period, one of Avhich had been missed by the sagacity 
of Greece and Rome, were chimneys and glass windows. Noth- 
ing, apparently, can be more simple tlian the former ; yet the 
wisdom of ancient times had been content to let the smoke 
escape by an aperture in the centre of the roof; and a dis- 
covery, of which Vitruvius had not a glimpse, was made, per- 
haps in this country, by some forgotten semi-barbarian. About 
the middle of the fourteenth century the use of chimneys is 
distinctly mentioned in England and in Ita,ly ; but they are 
found in several of our castles which bear a much older date.^^ 
This country seems to have lost very early the art of making 
glass, Avhich was preserved in France, whence artificers were 
brought into England to furnish the windows in some new 
churches in the seventh century. It is said that in the reign 
of Henry III. a few ecclesiastical buildings had glazed windows. 
Suger, however, a century before, had adorned his great work, 

" For further details on Domestic Architecture in England, see NoTK I. 

"' Mr. Twopeny observes : " I'liere does not ai)i)ear to be anv evidence of the use 
of chimney-sliafts in England prior to the twelfth century. In Rochester Castle, 
which is in all probability the work of William ("orbyl, about 1130, there are complete 
fireplaces with semicircular backs, and a shaft in each jamb, supporting a semicircu- 
lar arch over the opening, and that is enriched with the zigzag moulding ; some of 
these project slightly from the wall ; the (lues, however, go only a few ieet up in the 
thickness of the wall, and are then turned out at the back, the ajiertures being small 
oblong holes. At the castle, Hedingham, Essex, which is of about the same date, 
there are fireplaces and chimneys of a similar kind. A few years later, the improve- 
niciit of can-ying tlie flue up the whole height of the wall appears ; as at Christ 
Church, Hants ; the keep at Newcastle ; Sherborne Castle, etc. The early chimney- 
shafts are of considerable height, and circular ; afterwards they assumed a great 
variety of forms, and during llie fourteenth century they are frecj'uenlly very short." 
— (ilo'ssary of Ancient Architecture, p. 100, edit. 1845. It is said, tt)o, here that 
chimneys were seldom used in halls till near the end of the fifteenth century ; the 
smoke took its course, if it pleased, through a hole in the roof. 



State OF Society. FURNITURE OF HOUSES. 607 

the Al)bey of St. Denis, with windows, not only glazed but 
painted ; and I presume that other churches of the same class, 
both in France and England, especially after the lancet-shaped 
window had yielded to one of ampler dimensions, were gen- 
erally decorated in a similar manner. Yet glass is said not to 
have been employed in the domestic architecture of France 
before the fourteenth century; and its introduction into England 
was probably by no means earlier. Nor, indeed, did it come 
into general use during the period of the Middle Ages. Glazed 
windows were considered as movable furniture, and probably 
bore a high price. When the earls of Northumberland, as late 
as the reign of Elizabeth, left Alnwick Castle, the windows 
were taken out of their frames, and carefully laid by. 

But if the domestic buildings of the fifteenth century would 
not seem very spacious or convenient at present, far less 
would this luxurious generation be content with their internal 
accommodations. A gentleman's house containing three or 
four beds was extraordinarily Avell provided; few, probably, 
had more than two. The walls were commonly bare, without 
wainscot or even plaster ; except that some great houses were 
furnished with hangings, and that perhaps hardly so soon as 
the reign of Edward IV. It is unnecessary to add, that neither 
libraries of books nor pictures could have found a place among 
furniture. Silver plate was very rare, and hardly used for the 
table. A few inventories of furniture that still remain exhibit 
a miserable deficiency. And this was incomparably greater in 
private gentlemen's houses than among citizens, and especially 
foreign merchants. We have an inventory of the goods be- 
longing to Contarini, a rich Venetian trader, at his house in 
St. I>otolph's Lane, a.d. 1481. Tliere ajjpear to have been no 
less than ten IkhIs, and glass windows are es])ecially noticed as 
movable furniture. No mention, however, is made of chairs 
or looking-glasses. If we comj)are this account, however 
trifling in our estimation, with a similar inventory of furniture 
in Skipton Castle, the great honor of the earls of Cumberland, 
and among the most splendid mansions of the North, not at 
the same period — for I have not found any inventory of a 
nobleman's furniture so ancient — but in 1572, after almost 
a century of continual improvement, we shall be astonished at 
the inferior provision of the baronial residence. There were 
not more than seven or eight beds in this great castle ; nor had 
any of the chambers either chairs, glasses, or carpets. It is in 
this sense, probably, that w(^ must luiderstand ^neas Sylvius, 
if he meant anything more than to express a traveller's discon- 



008 FARM-HOUSES. Chap. IX. Paet IT. 

tent, when he declares that the kings of Scotland would rejoice 
to be as well lodged as the second class of citizens at Nurem- 
berg. Few burghers of that town had mansions, I presume, 
equal to the palaces of Dunfermline or Stirling; but it is not 
vmlikely that they were better furnished. 

In the construction of farmhouses and cottages, especially 
the latter, there have probably been fewer changes ; and those 
it would be more difficult to follow. No building of this class 
can be supposed to exist of the antiquity to which the present 
work is confined ; and I do not know that we have any docu- 
ment as to the inferior architecture of England so valuable as 
one of which M. de Paulmy has quoted for that of France, 
though perhaps more strictly applicable to Italy, an illumi- 
nated manuscript of the fourteenth century, being a translation 
of Crescentio's work on agriculture, illustrating the customs 
and, among other things, the habitations of the agricultural 
class. According to Paulmy, there is no other difference be- 
tween an ancient and a modern farmhouse than arises from 
the introduction of tiled roofs. In the original work of Cres- 
centio, a native of Bologna, who composed this treatise on 
rural affairs about the year 1300, an Italian farmhouse, when 
built at least according to his plan, appears to have been 
commodious both in size and arrangement. Cottages in Eng- 
land seem to have generally consisted of a single room, with- 
out division of stories. Chimneys were unknown in such 
dwellings till the early part of Elizabeth's reign, when a very 
rapid and sensible improvement took place in the comforts of 
our yeomanry and cottages. 

§ 13. It must be remembered that I have introduced this 
disadvantageous representation of civil architecture as a proof 
of general poverty and backwardness in the refinements of 
life. Considered in its higiier departments, that art is the 
principal boast of the Middle Ages. Tlie common bidldings, 
especially those of a public kind, were constructed with skill 
and attention to durability. The castellated style displays 
these qualities in great perfection ; the means are well 
ada]>ted to their objects, and its imposing grandeur, though 
chiefly resulting, no doubt, from massiveness and historical 
association, sometimes indicates a degree of architectural 
genius in the conception. Ikit the most remarkable works 
of this art are the religious edifices erected in the twelfth 
and three following centuries. These structures, uniting 
sublimity in general composition with the beauties of variety 
and form, intricacy of ]3arts, skilful or at least fortunate 



State of Society. ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. 609 

effects of shadow and light, and m some instances with ex- 
traordinary mechanical science, are naturally apt to lead 
those antiquaries who are most conversant with them into 
too partial estimates of the times wherein they were founded. 
They certainly are accustomed to behold the fairest side of 
the picture. It was the favorite and most honorable employ- 
ment of ecclesiastical Avealth to erect, to enlarge, to repair, 
to decorate cathedral and conventual churches. An immense 
capital must have been expended upon these buildings in 
England between the Conquest and the Reformation. And 
it is pleasing to observe how the seeds of genius, hidden as 
it were under the frost of that dreary winter, began to bud 
in the first sunshine of encouragement. In the darkest period 
of the Middle Ages, especially after the Scandinavian incur- 
sions into France and England, ecclesiastical architecture, 
though always far more advanced than any other art, bespoke 
the rudeness and poverty of the times. It began towards the 
latter part of the eleventh century, when tranquillity, at least 
as to former enemies, was restored, and some degree of learn- 
ing reappeared, to assume a more noble . appearance. The 
Anglo-Norman cathedrals were perhaps as much distinguished 
above other works of man in their own age, as the more 
splendid edifices of a later period. The science manifested 
in them is not, however, very great ; and their style, though 
by no means destitute of lesser beauties, is, upon the whole, 
an awkward imitation of Iloman architecture, or perhaps 
more immediately of the Saracenic buildings in Spain and 
those of the lower Greek Empire. But about the middle of 
the twelfth century this manner began to give place to what 
is imj)ro})erly denominated the Gothic architecture ; of which 
the pointed arch, formed by the segments of two intersecting 
semicircles of equal radius and described about a common 
diameter, has generally been deemed the essential character- 
istic. We are not concerned at present to inquire whether 
this style originated in France or Germany, Italy or England, 
since it was certainly almost simultaneous in all these coun- 
tries ; nor from what source it was derived — a question of 
no small difficulty. I would only venture to remark that, 
whatever may be thought of the origin of the pointed arch, 
for which there is more than one mode of accounting, we 
must perceive a very Oriental character in the vast profusion 
of ornament, es})ecially on the exterior surface, which is as 
distinguishing a mark of Gothic buildings as their arches, 
and contributes in an eminent dearree both to their beauties 



610 PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE. Chap. IX, Paet II, 

and to their defects. This indeed is rather applicable to the 
later than the earlier stage of architecture, and rather to Conti- 
nental than English churches. Amiens is in a far more florid 
style than Salisbury, though a contemporary structure. The 
Gothic species of architecture is thouglit by most to have 
reached its perfection, considered as an object of taste, by the 
middle or perhaps the close of the fourteenth century, or at 
least to have lost something of its excellence by the corre- 
sponding part of the next age ; an effect of its early and 
rapid cultivation, since arts appear to have, like individuals, 
their natural progress and decay. The mechanical execution, 
however, continued to improve, and is so far beyond the ap- 
parent intellectual powers of those times, that some have 
ascribed the principal ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity 
of freemasons, depositaries of a concealed and traditionary 
science. There is probably some ground for this opinion ; 
and the earlier archives of that mysterious association, if they 
existed, might illustrate the progress of Gothic architecture, 
and perhaps reveal its origin. The remarkable change into 
this new style, that was almost contemporaneous in every 
part of Europe, cannot be explained by any local circum- 
stances, or the capricious taste of a single nation. 

§ 14. It would be a pleasing task to trace with satisfactory 
exactness the slow and almost, perhaps, insensible progress 
of agriculture and internal improvement during the latter 
period of the Middle Ages. I have already adverted to the 
wretched condition of agriculture during the prevalence of 
feudal tenures, as well as before their general establishment. 
Yet even in the least civilized ages there were not wanting 
partial encouragements to cultivation, and the ameliorating 
principle of human industr}^ struggled against destructive 
revolutions and barbarous disorder. The devastation of war 
from the liftli to the eleventh century rendered land the least 
costly of all gifts, though it must ever be the most truly val- 
uable and permanent. Many of the grants to monasteries, 
which strike us as enormous, were of districts absolutely 
wasted, which would probably have been reclaimed by no 
other means. We owe the agricultural restoration of great 
l)art of Europe to the monks. They chose, for the sake of 
retirement, secluded regions, which they cultivated with the 
labor of their hands. Several charters are extant, granted 
to convents, and sometimes to laymen, of lands which they 
had recovered from a desert condition, after the ravages of 
the Saracens. Some districts were allotted to a body of Span- 



State of Society. AGRICULTURE IN ENGLAND. 611 

ish cdlonists, who emigrated, in tlie reign of Louis the Debo- 
nair, to live under a Christian sovereign. Nor is this tlie 
only instance of agricultural colonies. Charlemagne trans- 
planted part of his conquered Saxons into Flanders, a coun- 
try at that time almost unpeopled ; and at a much later 
period there was a remarkable reflux from the same country, 
or rather from Holland to the coasts of the Baltic Sea. In 
the twelfth century, great numbers of Dutch colonists settled 
along the whole line between the Ems and the Vistula. • They 
obtained grants of uncultivated land on condition of hxed 
rents, and were governed by their own laws under magistrates 
of their own election. 

There cannot be a more striking proof of the low condition 
of English agriculture in the eleventh century than is exhib- 
ited by Doomsday -l30ok. Though almost all England had- been 
partially cultivated, and we find nearly the same manors, 
except in the north, which exist at present, yet the value and 
extent of cultivated ground are inconceivably small. We are 
lost in amazement at the constant recurrence of two or three 
carucates in demesne, with other lands occupied by ten or a 
dozen villeins, valued altogether at forty shillings, as the 
return of a manor, which now would yield a competent income 
to a gentleman. If Doomsday-book can be considered as even 
approaching to accuracy in respect of these estimates, agricul- 
ture must certainly have made a very material progress in the 
four succeeding centuries. By the statute of Merton, in the 
20th of Henry III., the lord is permitted to approve, that is, 
to enclose the waste lands of his manor, provided he leave 
sufficient common of pasture for the freeholders. Higden, a 
writer who lived about the time of Richard II., says, in refer- 
ence to the number of hydes and vills of England at the 
Conquest, that by clearing woods and ploughing up wastes 
there were many more of each in his age than formerly. And 
it might be easily presumed, independently of proof, that 
woods were cleared, marshes drained, and wastes brought into 
tillage, during the long period that the house of Plantagenet 
sat on the throne. From manorial surveys indeed and similar 
instruments, it appears that in some places there was nearly 
as much ground cultivated in the reign of Edward III. as at 
the present day. The condition of different comities, however, 
was very far from being alike, and in general the northern 
and western parts of England were the most backward. 

The culture of arable land was very imperfect. Fleta re- 
marks, in the reign of Edward I. or II., that unless an acre 



612 AGRICULTURE IN ENGLAND Chap. IX. Part II. 

yielded more than six bushels of corn, the farmer Avould be a 
loser, and the land yield no rent. And Sir John Cullum, from 
very minute accounts, has calculated that nine or ten bushels 
were a full average crop on an acre of Avheat. An amazing 
excess of tillage accompanied, and partly, I suppose, produced, 
this imperfect cultivation. In Hawsted, for example, under 
Edward I., there were thirteen or fourteen hundred acres of 
arable, and only forty-five of meadow ground. A similar dis- 
propo*'tion occurs almost invariably in every account we pos- 
sess. This seems inconsistent with the low price of cattle. 
But we must recollect that the common pasture, often the 
most extensive part of a manor, is not included, at least by 
any specific measurement, in these surveys. The rent of land 
differed of course materially ; sixpence an acre seems to have 
been .about the average for arable land in the thirteenth cen- 
tury, though meadow was at double or treble that sum. But 
the landlords were naturally solicitous to augment a revenue 
that became more and more inadequate to their luxuries. They 
grew attentive to agricultural concerns, and perceived that a 
high rate of produce, against which their less enlightened 
ancestors had been used to clamor, would bring much more 
into their coffers than it took away. The exportation of corn 
had been absolutely prohibited. But the statute of the 15th 
of Henry VI., c. 2, reciting that " on this account farmers and 
others who use husbandry cannot sell their corn but at a low 
price, to the great damage of the realm," permits it to be sent 
anywhere but to the king's enemies, so long as the quarter of 
wheat shall not exceed 6s. Sd. in value, or that of barley 3s. 

The price of wool was fixed in the thirty-second year of the 
same reign at a minimum, below which no person was suffered 
to buy it, though he might give more — a provision neither 
wise nor equitable, but obviously suggested by the same 
motive. Wliether the rents of land were augmented in any 
degree through these measures, I have not ]ierceived ; their 
great rise took place in the reign of Henry VIII., or rather 
afterwards. The usual price of land under Edward IV. seems 
to have been ten years' purchase. 

In Italy the rich Lombard plains, still more fertilized by 
irrigation, became a garden, and agriculture seems to have 
reached the excellence wliicli it still retains. The constant 
warfare, indeed, of neighboring cities is not very favorable to 
industry; and upon tliis account we might incline to place the 
greatest territorial improvement of Lombardy at an era rather 
posterior to that of her republican government ; but from tliis 



State OF Society. AND IN FRANCE AND ITALY. 613 

it primarily sprung ; and without tiie subjugation of the 
feudal aristocrac}^, and that perpetual demand upon the fer- 
tility of the earth which an increasing population of citizens 
produced, the valley of the Po would not have yielded more 
to human labor than it had done for several preceding cen- 
turies. Though Lombardy was extremely populous in the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, she exported large quan- 
tities of corn. But whatever mysterious influence of soil or 
climate has scattered the seeds of death on the western regions 
of Tuscany, had not manifested itself in the Middle Ages. 
Among uninhabitable plains, the traveller is struck by the 
ruins of innumerable castles and villages, monuments of a time 
when pestilence was either unfelt, or had at least not forbade 
the residence of mankind. Volterra, whose deserted walls 
look doAvn upon that tainted solitude, was once a small but free 
republic. Siena, round whom, though less dejDopulated, the 
malignant influence hovers, was once almost the rival of 
Florence. So melancholy and apparently irresistible a decline 
of culture and population through physical causes, as seems 
to have gradually overspread that portion of Italy, has not, 
perhaps, been experienced in any other part of Europe, unless 
we except Iceland. 

The Italians of the fourteenth century seem to have paid 
some attention to an art of which, both as related to culti- 
vation and to architecture, our own forefathers were almost 
entirely ignorant. Crescentius dilates upon horticulture, and 
gives a pretty long list of herbs, both esculent and medicinal. 
His notions about the ornamental department are rather 
beyond what we should expect, and I do not know that his 
scheme of a flower-garden could be much amended. His 
general arrangements, which are minutely detailed with evi- 
dent fondness for the subject, would of course ap])ear too 
formal at present ; yet less so than those of subse(]uent times ; 
and though acquainted with what is called tlje topiary art, 
that of training or cutting trees into regular flgures, he does 
not seem to run into its extravagance. Regular gardens, 
according to Paulmy, were not made in France till tlie 
sixteenth or even seventeenth century ; yet one is said to 
have existed at the Louvre of much older construction. 
England, I believe, had nothing of the ornamental kind, unless 
it were some trees regularly disposed in the orchard of a 
monastery. Even the common horticultural art for culinary 
purposes, though not entirely neglected, since the produce of 
gardens is sometimes mentioned in ancient deeds, had not 



614 CHANGES IN THE Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

been cultivated Avitli much attention. The esculent vegeta- 
bles now most in use were introduced in the reign of Elizabeth, 
and some sorts a great deal later. 

§ 15. I should leave this slight survey of economical history 
still more imperfect were I to make no observation on the 
relative values of money. Without something like precision 
in our notions upon this subject, every statistical inquiry 
becomes a source of confusion and error. 

In the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., previously to 
the first debasement of the coin by the latter in 1301, the or- 
dinary price of a quarter of wheat appears to have been about 
four shillings, and that of barley and oats in proportion. 
A sheep was rather sold high at a shilling, and an ox might be 
reckoned at ten or twelve. The value of cattle is, of course, 
dependent upon their breed and condition, and we have un- 
luckily no early account of butcher's meat ; but we can hardly 
take a less multiple than about thirty for animal food, and 
eighteen or twenty for corn, in order to bring the prices of the 
thirteenth century to a level with those of the present day. 
Combining the two, and setting the comparative dearness of 
cloth against the cheapness of fuel and many other articles, 
we may, perhaps, consider any given sum under Henry III. 
and Edward I. as equivalent in general command over 
commodities to about twenty-four or twenty-five times their 
nominal value at present. Under Henry VI. the coin had lost 
one-third of its weight in silver, which caused a proportional 
increase of money prices ; but, so far as I can perceive, there 
had been no diminution in the value of that metal. We have 
not much information as to the fertility of the mines which 
supplied Europe during the Middle Ages ; but it is probable 
that the dram of silver towards the East, joined to the os- 
tentatious splendor of courts, might fully absorb the usual 
produce. By the statute 15 Henry VI., c. 2, the price up to 
which wheat might be exported is fixed at Os. Sd., a point no 
doubt above the average ; and the private documents of that 
period, which are sutticiently numerous, lead to a similar 
result.^^ Sixteen will be a proper multiple when we would 



" These will chiefly be found in Sir F. Eden's fnble of prices; the following may 
be added from the account-book of a convent between 1415 and H25. VVlieat varied 
from 4s. to 6s. —barley from 3s. 2d. to 4s. lOrf. — oats from Is. 8d. to 2s. 4(;. — oxen 
from 12s. to 16s. — sheep from Is 2rf. to Is. 4(1. — butter Jrf. per lb. — efifj.s twenty-five 
for \d. — cheese ^d. per lb. — Lansdowne MSS., vol. i, Nos. 2S and 29. These prices 
do not always agree with those given in other documents of equal authority in the 
same period; but the value of provisions varied in different counties, and still more 
so in different seasons of the year. 



State of Society. 



VALUE OF MONEY. 



615 



bring the general value of money in this reign to our present 
standard." 

But after ascertaining the proportional values of money at 
different periods by a comparison of the prices in several of the 
chief articles of expenditure, which is the only fair process, we 
shall sometimes be surprised at incidental facts of this class 
whicli seem irreducible to any rule. These difficulties arise 
not so much from the relative scarcity of particular commod- 
ities, which it is for the most part easy to explain, as from 
the change in manners and in the usual mode of living. We 
have reached in this age so high a pitch of luxury that we can 
hardly believe or comprehend the frugality of ancient times, 
and have in general formed mistaken notions as to the habits 
of expenditure which then prevailed. Accustomed to judge 
of feudal and chivalrous ages by works of fiction, or by his- 
torians who embellished their writings with accounts of occa- 
sional festivals and tournaments, and sometimes inattentive 
enough to transfer the manners of the seventeenth to the four- 
teenth century, we are not at all aware of the usual sim})licity 
with which the gentry lived under Edward I. or even Henry 
VI. They drank little wine ; they had no foreign luxuries ; tliey 
rarely or never kept male servants except for husbandry ; their 
horses, as we may guess by the price, were indifferent ; they sel- 
dom travelled beyond their county. And even their hospital- 
ity must have been greatly limited, if the value of manors were 
really no greater than we find it in many surveys. Twenty- 
four seems a sufficient multiple when we would raise a sum 
mentioned by a writer under Edward I. to the same real value 
expressed in our present money, but an income of £10 or £20 
was reckoned a competent estate for a gentleman ; at least the 
lord of a single manor would seldom have enjo^-ed more. A 
knight who possessed £150 per annum passed for extremely 

1^ I insert the following comparative table of English money from Sir Frederick 
Eden. 







Value of 








Value of 








pound 


Propor- 






pound 
sterling, 


Propor- 






present 


tion. 






present 








money. 








money. 








£ s. d. 








£. s. d. 




Conquest 


.lOfifi 


2 IS \\ 


2-906 


.34 Henrv VIII. 


.1543 


1 3 3\ 


1163 


28 Edward I. . . 


1300 


2 17 5 


2-871 


.36 Henrv VIII. 


.1545 


13 Hi 


698 


IS Edward III.. 


.\-M-i 


2 12 t\ 


2 622 


.37 Henrv VIII. 


.1546 


9 3J 


0-466 


20 Edwiird III. 


.1.34fi 


2 11 8 


2-583 


5 Edward VI.. 


.1.551 


4 7i 


0-J32 


27 Edward III. 


. 1353 


2 6 6 


2-.3-25 


[ 6 Edward VI.. 


. 1.552 


1 6] 


1 -0-J8 


1.3 Henrv IV... 


.1412 


1 IS 9 


1-9.37 


1 1 IMary 

2 E;iizabeth ... 


1553 


1 5] 


l-0-!4 


4 Edward IV.. 


.14()4 


1 11 


1-55 


. 1560 


1 8 


1-03:' 


18 Henry VIII. 


. 1527 


1 7 6J 


1-378 


43 Elizabeth . . . 


.1601 


1 


1-000 



61G TAT OF LABOKEES. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

rich. Yet this was not equal in command over commodities 
to £4000 at present. But this income was comparatively free 
from taxation, and its expenditure lightened by the services 
of his villeins. Such a person, however, must have been among 
the most opulent of country gentlemen. Sir John Fortescue 
speaks of iive pounds a year as " a fair living for a yeoman," 
a class of whom he is not at all inclined to diminish the impor- 
tance. So, when Sir William Drury, one of the richest men 
in Suffolk, bequeaths, in 1493, tifty marks to each of his daugh- 
ters, we must not imagine that this was of greater value than 
four or five hundred pounds at this day, but remark the family 
pride and want of ready money which induced country gentle- 
men to leave their younger children in poverty. Or, if Ave 
read that the expense of a scholar at the university in 1514 
was but five pounds annually, we should err in supposing that 
he had the liberal accommodation Avhich the ])resent age deems 
indispensable, but consider how much could be afforded for 
about sixty pounds, which will be not far from the proportion. 
And what would a modern lawyer say to the following entry 
in the church-warden's accounts of St. Margaret, Westminster, 
for 1476 : " Also paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for 
his counsel-giving, 3s. Sd., tvith foiirpence for Ms dinner " ? 
Though fifteen times the fee might not seem altogether inade- 
quate at present, five shillings would hardly furnish the table 
of a barrister, even if the fastidiousness of our manners would 
admit of his accepting such a dole. But this fastidiousness, 
which considers certain kinds of remuneration degrading to a 
man of liberal condition, did not prevail in those simple ages. 
It would seem rather strange that a young lady should learn 
needlework an(^- good breeding in a family of superior rank, 
paying for her board ; yet such was the laudable custom of the 
fifteenth and even sixteenth centuries, as we perceive by the 
Paston Letters, and even later authorities. 

There is one very unpleasing remark which every one who 
attends to the subject of prices will be induced to make — that 
the laboring classes, especially those engaged in agriculture, 
were better provided with the means of subsistence in the 
reign of Edward III. or of Henry VI. than they are at pres- 
ent. In the fourteenth century Sir John Cullum observes a 
harvest-man had fourpence a day, which enabled him in a 
week to buy a comb of wheat ; but to buy a comb of wheat 
a man must now (1784) work ten or twelve days. So, under 
Henry VI., if meat was at a farthing and a half the pound, 
which I suppose was about the truth, a laborer earning 



State of Society. PAY OF LABORERS. 617 

threepence a day, or eighteen-peiice in the week, coukt buy 
a bushel of wheat at six shillings the quarter, and twenty- 
four pounds of meat for his family. Several acts of Parlia- 
ment regulate the wages that miglit be paid to laborers of 
different kinds. Thus the statute of laborers in 1350 fixed 
the wages of reapers during harvest at threepence a day 
without diet, equal to five shillings at present ; that of 23 
Henry VI., c. 12, in 1444, fixed the reapers' wages at five- 
pence, and those of common workmen in building at 3hd., 
equal to 6s. Sd. and 4^. M. ; that of 11 Henry VII. , c. 22, in 
1496, leaves tlie wages of laborers in harvest as before, but 
rather increases those of ordinary workmen. The yearly 
wages of a chief hind or shepherd by the act of 1444 were 
£1 4s., equivalent to about £20; those of a common servant 
inhusbandry, 18s. 4:d., with meat and drink: they were some- 
what augmented by the statute of 1496. Yet, although these 
wages are regulated as a maximum by acts of Parliament, 
which may naturally be supposed to have had a view rather 
towards diminishing than enhancing the current rate, I am not 
fully convinced that they were not rather beyond it ; private ac- 
counts at least do not always correspond with these statutable 
prices. And it is necessary to remember that the uncertainty 
of employment, natural to so imperfect a state of husbandry, 
must have diminished the laborers' means of subsistence. Ex- 
treme dearth, not more owing to adverse seasons than to im- 
provident consumption, was frequently endured. Put after 
every allowance of this kind I should find it difficult to resist 
the conclusion that,' however the laborer has derived benefit 
from the cheapness of manufactured commodities and from 
many inventions of common utility, he is much inferior in 
ability to support a family to his ancestors three or four cen- 
turies ago. I know not why some have supposed that meat 
was a luxury seldom obtained by the laborer. Doubtless he 
could not have procured as much as he pleased. Put, from 
the greater cheapness of cattle, as compared with corn, it seems 
to follow that a more considerable portion of his ordinary diet 
consisted of animal food than at ])resent. It was remarked by 
Sir John Fortescue that the English lived far more upon ani- 
mal diet than their rivals, the French ; and it was natural to 
ascribe their superior strength and courage to this cause. I 
should feel much satisfaction in being convinced that no de- 
terioration in the state of the laboring classes has really taken 
place ; yet it cannot, I think, appear extraordinary to those 
who re:4ect that the whole population of England in the year 



618 POLICE. Chap. IX. Part II. 

1377 did not much exceed 2,300,000 souls, about one-fifth of 
the results upon the last enumeration — an increase with which 
that of the fruits of the earth cannot be suj^posed to have kept 
an even pace. 

§ 16. The second head to which I referred — the improve- 
ments of European society in the latter period of the Middle 
Ages — comprehends several changes, not always connected 
wdth each other, which contributed to inspire a more elevated 
tone of moral sentiment, or at least to restrain the commission 
of crimes. The first and perhaps the most important of these, 
was the gradual elevation of those whom u.njust systems of 
polity had long depressed — of the people itself, as opposed 
to the small number of rich and noble — by the abolition or 
desuetude of domestic and predial servitude, and by the privi- 
leges extended to corporate towns. The condition of slavery 
is, indeed, perfectly consistent with the observance of moral 
obligations ; yet reason and experience will justify the sentence 
of Homer, that he who loses his liberty loses half his virtue. 
Those who have acquired, or may hope to acquire, property of 
their own, are most likely to respect that of others ; those 
whom law protects as a i)arent are most willing to yield her a 
filial obedience ; those who have much to gain by the good-will 
of their fellow-citizens are most interested in the preservation of 
an honorable character. I have been led, in different parts 
of the present work, to consider these great revolutions in the 
order of society under other relations than that of their moral 
efficacy, and it will therefore be unnecessary to dwell upon 
them ; especially as this efficacy is indeterminate, though I 
think unquestionable, and rather to be inferred from general 
reflections than capable of much illustration by specific facts. 

§ 17. We may reckon in the next place, among the causes of 
moral improvement, a more regular administration of justice 
according to fixed laws, and a more effectual police. Whether 
the courts of judicature were guided by the feudal customs or 
the Roman law, it was necessary for them to resolve litigated 
questions Avith precision and uniformity. Hence a more dis- 
tinct theory of justice and good faith was gradually appre- 
hended ; and the moral sentiments of mankind were corrected, 
as on such subjects they often require to be, by clearer and 
better grounded inferences of reasoning. Again, though it 
cannot be said that lawless rapine was perfectly restrained 
even at the end of the fifteenth century, a sensible amend- 
ment had been everywhere experienced. Private warfare, the 
licensed robbery of feudal manners, had been subjected to so 



State OF Society. RELIGIOUS SECTS. 619 

many mortifications by the kings of France, and especially by 
St. Louis, that it can hardly be traced beyond the fourteenth 
century. In Germany and Spain it lasted longer; but the 
various associations for maintaining tranrjuillity in the former 
country had considerably diminished its violence before the 
great national measure of public peace adopted under Maxi- 
milian. Acts of outrage committed by powerful men became 
less frequent as the executive government acquired more 
strength to chastise them. We read that St. Louis, the best 
of French kings, imposed a fine upon the Lord of Vernon for 
permitting a merchant to be robbed in his territory between 
sunrise and sunset. For by the customary law, though in gen- 
eral ill observed, the lord was bound to keep the roads free 
from depredators in the tlaytime, in consideration of the toll 
he received from passengers. The same prince was with diffi- 
culty prevented from passing a capital sentence on Enguerrand 
de Coney, a baron of France, for a murder. Charles the Fair 
actually put to death a nobleman of Languedoc for a series of 
robberies, notwithstanding the intercession of the provincial 
nobility. The towns established a police of their own for in- 
ternal security, and rendered themselves formidable to neigh- 
boring plunderers. Finally, though not before the reign of 
Louis XL, an armed force was established for the preservation 
of police. Various means were adopted in England to prevent 
robberies, which indeed v^ere not so frequently perpetrated as 
they were on the Continent, by men of high condition. None 
of these, perhaps, had so much efficacy as the frequent sessions 
of judges under commissions of jail delivery. But the spirit of 
this country has never brooked that coercive police which can- 
not exist without breaking in upon personal liberty by irksome 
regulations and discretionary exercise of power ; the sure in- 
strument of tyranny, which renders civil privileges at once 
nugatory and insecure, and by which we should dearly pur- 
chase some real benefits connected with its slavish disci})line. 

§ 18. I have some difficulty in adverting to another source 
of moral improvement during this period — the growth of re- 
ligious opinions adverse to those of the Established Church — 
both on account of its great obscurity, and because many of 
these heresies were mixed up with an excessive fanaticism. 
But they fixed themselves so deeply in the hearts of the infe- 
rior and more numerous classes, they bore, generally speaking, 
so immediate a relation to the state of manners, and they illus- 
trate so much that more visible and eminent revolution Avhich 
ultimately rose out of them in the sixteenth century, that I 



620 RELIGIOUS SECTS. Chap. IX. Part II. 

must reckon these among the most interesting phenomena in 
the progress of European society. 

Many ages elapsed during which no remarkable instance 
occurs of a popular deviation from the prescribed line of be- 
lief ; and pious Catholics console themselves by reflecting that 
their forefathers, in those times of ignorance, slept at least the 
sleep of orthodoxy, and that their darkness was interrupted 
by no false lights of human reasoning. But from the twelfth 
century this can no longer be their boast. An inundation of 
heresy broke in that age upon the Church, which no perse«u- 
tion was able thoroughly to repress, till it finally overspread 
half the surface of Europe. Of this religious innovation we 
must seek the commencement in a different part of the globe. 
The Manicheans afford an eminent example of that durable 
attachment to a traditional creed which so many ancient sects, 
especially in the East, have cherished through the vicissitudes 
of ages, in spite of persecution and contempt. Their plausible 
and widely extended system had been in early times connected 
with the name of Christianity, however incompatible with its 
doctrines and its history. After a pretty long obscurity, the 
Manichean theory revived Avith some modification in the west- 
ern parts of Armenia, and was propagated in the eighth and 
ninth centuries by a sect denominated PauUcians. Their 
tenets are not to be collected with absolute certainty from the 
mouths of their adversaries, and no apology of their own sur- 
vives. There seems, however, to be sufficient evidence that 
the PauUcians, though professing to acknowledge and even 
to study the apostolical writings, ascribed tlie creation of 
the world to an evil deity, Avhom they su})])osed also to be the 
author of the Jewish law, and consequently rejected all the 
Old Testament. Believing, with the ancient Gnostics, that 
our Saviour was clothed on earth with an im])assive celestial 
body, they denied the reality of his death and resurrection.^^ 

1' The most authentic account of the Paulichins i.s found in a little treatise of 
I'etrus Siculus, who lived about cS70, under Basil the ^laccdouiMu. He had been 
employed on an embassy to Tephrica, the princijial town of these heretics, so that he 
might easily be well informed; and, though he is sulliciently liigoted, I do not see 
any reason to i|uestion the general truth of his testimony, especially as it tallies so 
well with what we learn of the jiredecessors and successors of the I'aulicians. Pe- 
trus Siculus enumerates six I'aulician heresies. 1. They maintained the existence of 
two deities — the one evil, and the creator of this world; the other good, called 
ira.T'r\p cTToi'pario? o;, the author of that which is to come. 2. They refused to worship 
the Virgin, and asserted that Christ brought his body from heaven. 3. Tliey rejected 
the I.ord's Supper. 4. And the adoration o( tlie Cross. 5. They denied the authority 
of the Old I'estament, but adnutted tin- New, except the epistles of St. J'eter, and, 
perhaps, the Apocalypse. 6. They did not acknowledge the order of priests. 

There seems every reason to suppose that the PauUcians, notwithstanding their 
mistakes, were endowed with sincere and zealous piety, and studious of the Scrip- 
tures. 



State of Society. WALDENSES. 621 

These errors exposed them to a long and cruel persecution, 
during which a colony of exiles was planted by one of the 
Greek emperors in Bulgaria. From this settlement they si- 
lently promulgated their Manichean creed over the western 
regions of Cliristendom. A large part of the commerce of 
those countries with Constantinople was carried on for several 
centuries by the cliannel of the Danube. This opened an imme- 
diate intercourse with the Faulicians, who may be traced up that 
river through Hungary and 15avaria, or sometimes taking the 
route of Lombardy into Switzerland and France. In the last 
country, and especially in its southern and eastern provinces, 
they became conspicuous under a variety of names, such as 
Catharists, Picards, Faterins, but above all, Alhifjenses. It is 
beyond a doubt that many of these sectaries owed their origin 
to the Faulicians ; the appellation of Bulgarians was distinct- 
ively bestowed upon them ; and, according to some writers, they 
acknowledged a primate or i)atriarch resident in that country. 
The tenets ascribed to them by all contemporary authorities 
coincide so remarkably with those held by the Faulicians, and 
in earlier times by the INIanicheans, that I do not see how we 
can reasonably deny what is confirmed by separate and uncon- 
tradicted testimonies, and contains no intrinsic want of proba- 
bility. 

But though the derivation of these heretics, called Albigen- 
ses, from Bulgaria is sutRciently proved, it is by no means to 
be concluded that all who incurred the same imputation either 
derived their faith from the same country, or had adopted the 
Manichean theory of the Faulicians. From the very invectives 
of their enemies, and the acts of the Inquisition, it is manifest 
that almost every shade of heterodoxy was found among these 
dissidents, till it vanished in a simple protestation against 
the wealth and tyranny of the clergy. Those who were abso- 
lutely free from any taint of Manicheism are properly called 
Waldenses ; a name perpetually confounded in later times 
with that of Albigenses, but distinguishing a sect probably of 
separate origin, and at least of different tenets. These, accord- 
ing to the majority of writers, took their appellation from 
Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyons, the parent, about the year 
11(30, of a congregation of seceders from the church, who 
spread very rapidly over France and Germany. According to 
others, the original Waldenses were a race of uncorrupted 
shepherds, who in the valleys of the Alps had shaken off, or 
perhaps never learned, the system of superstition on which 
the Catholic Church depended for its ascendency. I am not 



G22 WIDE DIFFUSION OF NEW SECTS. Chap. IX. Part U. 

certain whether their existence can be distinctly traced beyond 
the preacliing of Waklo, but it is well known that the proper 
seat of the Waldenses, or Vaudois, has long continued to be in 
certain valleys of Piedmont. These pious and innocent secta- 
ries, of whom the very monkish historians speak well, appear 
to have nearly resembled the modern Moravians. They had 
ministers of their own appointment, and denied the lawfulness 
of oaths and of capital punishment. In other respects their 
opinions probably were not far removed from those usually 
called Protestant. A simplicity of dress, and especially the 
use of wooden sandals, was affected by this people. 

I have already had occasion to relate the severe persecution 
which nearly exterminated the Albigenses of Languedoc at the 
close of the twelfth century, and involved the counts of Tou- 
louse in their ruin. The Catharists, a fraternitj^ of the same 
Paulician origin, itiore dispersed than the Albigenses, had 
previously sustained a similar trial. Their belief Avas cer- 
tainly a compound of strange errors with truth ; but it was 
attended by qualities of a far superior lustre to orthodoxy, by 
a sincerity, a piety, and a self-devotion that almost purified 
the age in which they lived. It is always important to per- 
ceive that these high moral excellences have no necessary con- 
nection with speculative truths ; and upon this account I have 
been more disposed to state explicitly the real Manicheism of 
the Albigenses ; especially as Protestant writers, considering 
all the enemies of Rome as their friends, have been apt to 
place the opinions of these sectaries in a very false light. In 
the course of time, undoubtedly, the system of their Paulician 
teachers would have yielded, if the inquisitors had admitted 
the experiment, to a more accurate study of the Scriptures, 
and to the knowledge which they would have imbibed from 
the Church itself. And, in fact, we find that the peculiar 
tenets of Manicheism died away after the middle of the thir- 
teenth century, although a spirit of dissent from the estab- 
lished creed broke out in abundant instances during the two 
subsequent ages. 

We are in general deprived of explicit testimonies in tra- 
cing the revolutions of popular opinion. Much must, therefore, 
be left to conjecture; but I am inclined to attribute a very ex- 
tensive effect to the preaching of these heretics. They appear 
in various countries nearly during the same period — in Spain, 
Lombardy, Germany, Flanders, and England, as Avell as in 
Fr.mce. Thirty unhap|)y persons, convicted of denying the 
sacraments, are said to have perished at Oxford by cold and 



State of Society. TRANSLATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 623 

famine in the reign of Henry II. In every country the new 
sects appear to have spread chiefly among the lower people, 
which, whil^ it accounts for the imperfect notice of historians, 
indicates a more substantial influence upon the moral con- 
dition of society than the conversion of a few nobles or 
ecclesiastics. 

But even where men did not absolutely enlist under the 
banners of any new sect, they were stimulated by the temper 
of their age to a more zealous and independent discussion of 
their religious system. A curious illustration of this is fur- 
nished by one of the letters of Innocent III. He had been in- 
formed by the Bishop of Metz, as he states to the clergy of 
the diocese, that no small multitude of laymen and women, 
having procured a translation of the gospels, epistles of St. 
Paul, the Psalter, Job, and other books of Scrij^ture, to be made 
for them into French, meet in secret conviiiticles to hear them 
read and preach to each -other, avoiding the company of those 
who do not join in their devotion, and, having been reprimanded 
for this by some of their parish priests, have withstood them, 
alleging reasons from the Scriptures why they should not be 
so forbidden. Some of them, too, deride the ignorance of their 
ministers, and maintain that their own books teach them more 
than they could learn from the pulpit, and that they can 
express it better. Although the desire of reading the Scrip- 
tures, Innocent proceeds, is rather praiseworthy than reprehen- 
sible, yet they are to be blamed for frequenting secret assemblies, 
for usurping the office of preaching, deriding tlieir own minis- 
ters, and scorning the company of such as do not concur in 
their novelties. He presses the bishop and chapter to discover 
the author of this translation, which could not have been made 
without a knowledge of letters, and what were his intentions, 
and what degree of orthodoxy and res}iect for the Holy See 
those who used it possessed. This letter of Innocent III., how- 
ever, considering the nature of the man, is sufficiently temper- 
ate and conciliatory. It seems not to have answered its end ; 
for in another letter he complains that some members of this 
little association continued refractory, and refused to obey 
either the bishop or the pope.^^ 

In the eighth and ninth centuries, when the Vulgate had 
ceased to be generally intelligible, there is no reason to suspect 
any intention in the Gluirch to deprive the laity of the Scrip- 

1' Opera Innocent III., pp. -JftS, 537. A translation of the Bible had been made by 
direction of Peter Waldo; but whether this used in I>orrain was the same does not 
appear. Metz was full of the Vaudois, as we lind by other authorities. 



624 LOLLARDS. Chap. TX. Part IL 

tures. Translations were freely nuuL^ into the vernacular lan- 
guages, and, perhaps, read, in churches, altliough the acts of 
saints were generally deemed more instructive. Louis the 
Debonair is said to have caused a German version of the '^ew 
Testament to be made. Otfrid, in the same century, rendered 
the gospels, or rather abridged them, into German verse. This 
work is still extant, and is m several respects an object of 
curiosity. In the eleventh or twelfth century we find transla- 
tions of the Psalms, Job, Kings, and Maccabees into French. 
But after the diffusion of heretical opinions, or, what was much 
the same thing, of free inquiry, it became expedient to se- 
cure the orthodox faith from lawless interpretation. Accord- 
ingly, the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, prohibited the laity 
from possessing the Scriptures ; and this j)recaution was fre- 
quently repeated upon subsequent occasions.^" 

The ecclesiastical history of the thirteenth or fourteenth 
centuries teems with new sectaries and schismatics, various in 
their aberrations of opinion, but all concurring in detestation 
of the Established Church. They endured severe persecutions 
with a sincerity and firmness which in any cause ought to 
command respect. 

But in general we find an extravagant fanaticism among 
them ; and I do not know how to look for any amelioration of 
society from the Franciscan seceders, who quibbled about the 
property of things consumed by use, or from the mystical vis- 
ionaries of different appellations, whose moral practice was 
sometimes more than equivocal. Those who feel any curiosity 
about such subjects, which are by no means unimportant, as 
they illustrate the history of the human mind, will find them 
treated very fully by Mosheim. But the original sources of 
information are not always accessible in this country, and the 
research would, perhaps, be more fatiguing than profitable. 

I shall, for an opposite reason, pass lightly over the great 
revolution in religious oi)inion wrought in England by Wieliff, 
which will generally l)e familiar to the reader from our common 
historians. Nor am 1 concerned to treat of theological inquiries, 
or to write a history of the Church. Considered in its effects 

2" The Anglo-Saxon versions nro deservin;? of piirlicnlar romark. It has been said 
that our Cliurch maintaincil the privilcjfe of having part of the daily service in the 
mother tongue. " Even tlic mass itself," says Lapi)enberg, " was not read entirely 
in Latin." — Hist, of Kngland. vol. i., p. 'JO'i. Tills, liowever, is denied bv Lintrard, 
whose authority is prol):ibly supiTior. — Hist of Ang.-Sax. Chiirch, i., 307. Hut he 
allows that the E))istle aii<l (iosjii'l were i-cad in ICnglisli, which implies an authorized 
translation. And we may adopt in a great measure I appenl>erg's proposition, which 
follows the above passage : " The numerous versions and paraphrases of the Old and 
New Testament made those books known to the laity and more fandliar to the 
clergy." 



State of Society. HUSSITES. 625 

upon inannei's — the sole point wliich these pages have in view 
— the preaching of this new sect certainly produced an exten- 
sive reformation. But their virtues were by no means free 
from some unsocial qualities, m which, as well as in their 
superior attributes, the Lollards bear a very close resemblance 
to the Puritans of Elizabeth's reign ; a moroseness that pro- 
scribed all cheerful amusements, an uncharitable malignity that 
made no distinction in condemning the established clergy, and 
a narrow prejudice that applied the rules of the Jewish law to 
modern institutions. Some of their principles were far more 
dangerous to the good order of society, and cannot justly be 
ascribed to the Puritans, though they grew afterwards out of 
the same soil Such was the notion, which is imputed also to 
the Albigenses, that civil magistrates lose their right to govern 
by committing sin, or, as it was quaintly expressed in the sev- 
enteenth century, that dominion is founded in grace. These 
extravagances, however, do not belong to the learned and politic 
Wicliff, however they might be adopted by some of his enthu- 
siastic disciples. Fostered by the general ill-will towards the 
Church, his principles made vast progress in England, and, un- 
like those of earlier sectaries, were embraced by men of rank and 
civil influence. Notwithstanding the check they sustained by 
the sanguinary law of Henry IV., it is highly probable that nu;lti- 
tudes secretly cherished them down to the era of the Eefornuition. 
From England the spirit of religious innovation was prop- 
agated into Bohemia ; for though John Huss was very far 
from embracing all the doctrinal system of Wicliff, it is mani- 
fest that his zeal had been quickened by the writings of that 
reformer. Inferior to the Englishman in ability, but exciting 
greater attention by his constancy and sufferings, as well as 
by the memorable war which his ashes kindled, the Bohemian 
martyr was even more eminently the precursor of the Eefor- 
mation. But still, regarding these dissensions merely in a 
temporal light, I cannot assign any beneficial effect to the 
schism of the Hussites, at least in its immediate results, and 
in the country where it appeared. Though some degree of 
sympathy with their cause is inspired by resentment at the ill 
faith of their adversaries, and by the associations of civil and 
religious liberty, we cannot estimate the Taborites, and other 
sectaries of that description, but as ferocious and desperate 
fanatics. Perhaps, beyond the confines of Bohemia, more sub- 
stantial good may have been produced by the influence of its 
reformation, and a better tone of morals inspired into Ger- 
many. But I must again repeat that upon this obscure and 



626 CHIVALRY. Chap. IX. Part II. 

ambiguous subject I assert nothing definitely, and little with 
confidence. The tendencies of religious dissent in the four 
ages before the Eeformation appear to have generally con- 
duced towards the moral improvement of mankind; and facts 
of this nature occupy a far greater s})ace in a philosophical view 
of society during tliat period than we might at first imagine ; but 
every one who is disposed to prosecute this inquiry will assign 
their character according to the result of Ids own investigations. 

§ 19. But the best school of moral discipline which the 
Middle Ages afforded was the institution of chiyalry. There 
is something, perhaps, to allow for the partiality of modern 
writers upon this interesting subject; 3^et our most sceptical 
criticism must assign a decisive influence to this great source 
of human improvement. The more deeply it is considered, the 
more we shall become sensible of its importance. 

There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits which 
have from time to time moved over the face of the waters, 
and given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and 
energies of mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of 
religion, and of honor. It was the principal business of chiv- 
alry to animate and cherish the last of these three. And 
whatever high magnanimous energy the love of ]^berty or 
religious zeal has ever imparted was equalled by the exquisite 
sense of honor which this institution preserved. 

It appears probable that the custom of receiving arms at the 
age of manhood with some solemnity was of immemorial 
antiquity among the nations that overthrew the Roman 
Empire ; for it is mentioned by Tacitus to have prevailed 
among their German ancestors ; and his expressions might 
have been used with no great variation to describe the actual 
ceremonies of knighthood. There was even in that remote 
age a sort of public trial as to the fitness of the candidate, 
which, though perhaps confined to his bodily strength and 
activity, might be the germ of that refined investigation which 
was thought necessary in the perfect stage of chivalry. 
Proofs, though rare and incidental, might be adduced to show 
that in the time of Charlemagne, and even earlier, the sons of 
monarch s at least did not assume manly arms without a reg- 
ular investiture. And in the eleventh century it is evident 
that this was a general practice.-^ 

21 Nihil neque publicae neque privatre rei nisi avTnati agunt. Sed arma siimere non 
ante culquam moris, quara civitas sufloctunini probaverit. 'J'uiii in ipso concilio, vel 
priucipum aliquis, vel pater, vel propinquus, scuto fiameaque juvenem oriiaiit; luxe 
apud eos toga, hie prinius juventas lionos; aute hoc doiniis pars videntur, luox rei- 
publicae. — De Moribus German, c. 13. 



State of Society. CHI VA LEY. 627 

This ceremony, however, would perhaps of itself hr.ve done 
little towards forming that intrinsic principle which charac- 
terized the genuine chivalry. l!ut in the reign of Charlemagne 
we lind a military distinction that appears, in fact as well as 
in name, to have given birth to that institution. Certain 
feudal tenants, and I suppose also allodial proprietors, were 
bound to serve on horseback, equipped with the coat of mail. 
These were called Caballarii, from which the word chevaliers 
is an obvious corruption. But he who fought on horseback, 
and had been invested with peculiar firms in a solemn manner, 
wanted nothing more to render him a knight. Chivalry there- 
fore may, in a general sense, be referred to the age of Charle- 
magne. We may, however, go farther, and observe that these 
distinctive advantages above ordinary combatants were prob- 
ably the sources of tliat remarkable valor and that keen thirst 
for glory whicli became the essential attributes of a knightly 
character. For confidence in our skill and strength is the 
usual foundation of courage ; it is by feeling ourselves able to 
surmount common dangers that we become adventurous enough 
to encounter those of a more extraordinary nature, and to 
which more glory is attached. The reputation of superior per- 
sonal prowess, so difficult to be attained in the course of mod- 
ern warrare, and so liable to erroneous representations, was ■ 
always within the reach of tlie stoutest knight, and was 
founded on claims wdiicli could be measured with much accu- 
racy. Such is the subordination and mutual dependence in a 
modern army, that every man must be content to divide his 
glory with his comrades, his general, or his soldiers ; but the 
soul of chivalry was individual honor, coveted in so entire and 
absolute a perfection that it must not be shared with an army 
or a nation. Most of the virtues it inspired were what we 
may call independent, as opposed to those which are founded 
upon social relations. The knights-errant of romance perform 
their best exploits from the love of renown, or from a sort of 
abstract sense of justice, rather than from any solicitude to 
promote the happiness of mankind. If these springs of action 
are less generally beneficial, they are, however, more connected 
with elevation of character than the systematical prudence of 
men accustomed to social life. 

In the first state of chivalry, it was closely connected with 
the military service of fiefs. The Caballarii in the cajjitida- 
ries, the Milites of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were 
land-holders who followed their lord or sovereign into the 
field. A certain value of land was termed in England a 



628 CHIVALRY. Chap. IX. Part II. 

knight's fee, or in Normandy feuclum loriese, fief de hai;bert, 
from the coat of mail which it entitled and required the ten- 
ant to wear ; a military tenure was said to be by service in 
chivalry. To serve as knights, mounted and equipped, was 
the common duty of vassals ; it implied no personal merit, it 
gave of itself a claim to no civil privileges. But this knight- 
service founded upon a feudal obligation is to be carefully 
distinguished from that superior chivalry, in which all was 
independent and voluntary. The latter, in fact, could hardly 
flourish in its full perfection till the military service of feudal 
tenure began to decline, namely, in the thirteenth century. 
The origin of this personal chivalry I should incline to refer 
to the ancient usage of voluntary commendation, which I have 
mentioned in a former chapter. Men commended themselves, 
that is, did homage and professed attachment to a prince or 
lord ; generally, indeed, for protection or the hope of reward, 
but sometimes probably for the sake of distinguishing them- 
selves in his quarrels. When they received pay, which must 
have been the usual case, they were literally his soldiers, or 
stipendiary troops. Those who could afford to exert their 
valor Avithout recompense were like the knights of whom we 
read in romance, who served a foreign master through love, 
or thirst of glory, or gratitude. The extreme poverty of the 
lower nol)ility, arising from the subdivision of fiefs, and the 
politic generosity of rich lords, made this connection as 
strong as that of territorial dependence. A younger brother, 
leaving the paternal estate, in which he took a slender share, 
might look to wealth and dignity in the service of a powerful 
count. Knighthood, which he could not claim as his legal 
right, became the object of his chief ambition. It raised 
him in the scale of society, equalling him in dress, in arms, 
and in title, to the rich land-holders. As it was due to his 
merit, it did much more than equal him to those who had no 
pretensions but from wealth ; and the territorial knights be- 
came by degrees ashamed of assuming the title till they could 
challenge it by real desert. 

This class of noble and gallant cavaliers, serving commonly 
for ])ay, but on the most honorable footing, became far more 
numerous through the Crusades ; a great epoch in the history 
of European society. In these wars, as all feudal service was 
out of the question, it was necessary for the richer barons 
to take into their pay as many knights as they could afford to 
maintain ; speculating, so far as such motives operated, on an 
influence with the leaders of the expedition, and on a share 



State of Society. CHIVALRY. 629 

of plunder, proportioned to tlie number of their followers. 
During the period of tlie Crusades we lind the institution of 
chivalry acquire its full vigor as an order of personal nobility ; 
and its original connection with feudal tenure, if not alto- 
gether effaced, became in a great measure forgotten in the 
splendor and dignity of the new form which it wore. 

The Crusaders, however, changed in more than one respect 
the character of chivalry. Before that epoch it appears to 
have had no particular reference to religion. We can hardly 
perceive, indeed, wliy tlie assumption of arms to be used in 
Isutchering mankind should be treated as a religious cere- 
mony. The clergy, to do them justice, constantly opposed 
the private wars in which the courage of those ages wasted 
itself ; and all bloodshed was subject in strictness to a canon- 
ical penance. But the purposes for wdiich men bore arms in 
a crusade so sanctified their use, that chivalry acquired the 
character as much of a religious as a military institution. 
For many centuries the recovery of the Holy Land was con- 
stantly at the heart of brave and superstitious nobility ; and 
every knight was supposed at his creation to pledge himself, 
as occasion should arise, to tliat cause. Meanwhile, the de- 
fence of God's law against infidels was his primary and stand- 
ing duty. A knight, whenever present at mass, held the point 
of his sword before him while the gospel was read, to signify 
his readiness to support it. Writers of the Middle Ages com- 
pare the knightly to the priestly character in an elaborate 
parallel, and the investiture of the one was supposed analo- 
gous to the ordination of the other. The ceremonies upon 
this occasion were almost wholly religious. The candidate 
passed nights in prayer among priests in a church; he re- 
ceived the sacraments ; he entered into a bath, and was clad 
with a white robe, in allusion to the presumed purification of 
his life ; his sword was solemnly blessed ; everything, in short, 
was contrived to identify his new condition with the defence 
of religion, or at least of the Church. 

To this strong tincture of religion which entered into the 
composition of chivalry from the twelfth century, was added 
another ingredient equally distinguishing. A great respect 
for the female sex had always been a remarkable characteris- 
tic of the Northern nations. The German women were high- 
spirited and virtuous, qualities which might be causes or 
consequences of the veneration with which they were regarded. 
I am not sure that we could trace very minutely the condition 
of women for the period between the subversion of the Roman 



630 CHARACTERISTIC VIRTUES Chap. IX. Part II. 

Empire and the first Crusade; but apparently man did not 
grossly abuse liis superiority ; and in point of civil rights, and 
even as to the inheritance of property, the two sexes were 
placed perhaps as nearly on a level as the nature of such war- 
like societies would admit. There seems, however, to have 
been more roughness in the social intercourse between the 
sexes than we find in later periods. The spirit of gallantry, 
which became so animating a principle of chivalry, must be 
ascribed to the progressive refinement of society during the 
12th and two succeeding centuries. In a rude state of man- 
ners, as among the lower people in all ages, woman has not 
full scope to display those fascinating graces by which nature 
has designed to counterbalance the strength and energy of 
mankind. Even where those jealous customs that degrade 
alike the two sexes have not prevailed, her lot is domestic 
seclusion. Nor is she fit to share in the boisterous pastimes of 
drunken merriment to which the intercourse of an unpolished 
people is confined. But as a taste for the more elegant enjoy- 
ments of wealth arises — a taste which it is always her policy 
and her delight to nourish — she obtains an ascendency at first 
in the lighter hour, and from thence in the serious occupations 
of life. She chases, or brings into subjection, the god of Avine 
— a victory which might seem more ignoble were it less diffi- 
cult, and calls in the aid of divinities more propitious to her 
anrbition. The love of becoming ornament is not, perhaps, to 
be regarded in the light of vanity ; it is rather an instinct 
which woman has received from nature to give effect to those 
charms that are her defence ; and when commerce began to 
minister more effectually to the wants of luxury, the rich furs 
of the North, the gay silks of Asia, the wrought gold of do- 
mestic manufacture, illumined the halls of chivalry, and cast, 
as if by the spell of enchantment, that ineffable grace over 
beauty which the choice and arrangement of dress is calculated 
to bestow. Courtesy had always been the ]n-oper attribute of 
knighthood ; protection of the weak its legitimate duty ; but 
these were heightened to a pitch of enthusiasm when woman 
became their object. There was little jealousy shown in the 
treatment of that sex, at least in France, the fountain of chiv- 
alry ; they were present at festivals, at tournaments, and sat 
promiscuously in the halls of their castle. The romance of 
Perceforest (and romances have always been deemed good wit- 
nesses as to manners) tells of a feast where eight hundred 
knights had each of them a lady eating off his plate. For to eat 
off the same plate was a usual mark of gallantry or friendship. 



State of Society. ON CHIVALRY. 631 

Next, therefore, or even equal to devotion, stood gallantry 
among the principles of knighthood. But all comparison be- 
tween the two was saved by blending them together. The 
love of God and the ladies was enjoined as a single duty. He 
who was faithful and true to his mistress was held sure of 
salvation in the theology of castles, though not of cloisters. 

The gallantry of those ages, which was very often adulter- 
ous, had certainly no right to profane the name of religion ; 
but its union with valor was at least more natural, and became 
so intimate that the same word has served to express both quali- 
ties. In the French and English wars especially, the knights 
of each country brought to that serious conflict the s})irit 
of romantic attachment which had been cherished in the 
hours of peace. They fought at Poitiers or Verneuil as they 
had fought at tournaments, bearing over their armor scarfs 
and devices as the livery of their mistresses, and asserting the 
paramount beauty of her they served in vaunting challenges 
towards the enemy. Thus in the middle of a keen skirmish 
at Cherbourg, the squadrons remained motionless while one 
knight challenged to a single combat the most amorous of the 
adversaries. Such a defiance was soon accepted, and the 
battle only recommenced when one of the champions had lost 
his life for his love. In the first campaign of Edward's war some 
young English knights wore a covering over one eye, vowing, 
for the sake of their ladies, never to see with both till they 
should have signalized their prowess in the field. These ex- 
travagances of chivalry are so common that they form part of 
its general character, and prove how far a • course of action 
which depends upon the impulses of sentiment may come to 
deviate from common sense. 

But the morals of chivalry, we cannot deny, were not pure. 
In the amusing fictions Avhich seem to have been the only pop- 
ular reading of the Middle Ages, there reigns a licentious 
spirit, not of that slighter kind which is usual in such composi- 
tions, but indicating a general dissoluteness in the intercourse 
of the sexes. This has often been noticed of Boccaccio and 
the early Italian novelists ; but it equally characterized the 
tales and romances of France, whether metrical or in prose, 
and all the poetry of the Troubadours. The violation of mar- 
riage vows passes in them for an incontestable privilege of the 
brave and the fair ; and an accomplished knight seems to have 
enjoyed as undoubted j)rerogatives, by general consent of 
opinion, as were claimed by the brilliant courtiers of Louis XV. 

But neither that emulous valor which chivalry excited, nor 



632 CHARACTERISTIC VIRTUES Chap. IX. Part II. 

the religion and gallantry which were its animating principles, 
alloyed as the latter were by the corruption of those ages, 
could have rendered its institution materially conducive to 
the moral improvement of society. There were, however, ex- 
cellences of a very high class which it equally encouraged. 
Three virtues may particularly be noticed as essential in the 
estimation of mankind to the character of a knight — loyalty, 
courtesy, and munificence. 

(i.) Loyalty. — The first of these, in its original sense, may be 
defined fidelity to engagements ; whether actual promises, or 
such tacit obligations as bound a vassal to his lord and a sub- 
ject to his prince. It was applied also, and in the utmost strict- 
ness, to the fidelity of a lover towards the lady he served. 
Breach of faith, and especially an express promise, was held a 
disgrace that no valor could redeem. False, perjured, disloyal, 
recreant, were the epithets which he must be compelled to 
endure who had swerved from a plighted engagement even to- 
wards an enemy. This is one of the most striking changes 
produced by chivalry. Treachery, the usual vice of savage as 
well as corrupt nations, became infamous during the vigor of 
that discipline. As personal rather than national feeling actu- 
ated its heroes, they never felt that hatred, much less that fear 
of their enemies, which bind men to the heinousness of ill faith. 
In the wars of Edward III., originating in no real animosity, 
the spirit of honorable as well as courteous behavior towards the 
foe seems to have arrived at its highest point. Though avarice 
may have been the primary motive of ransoming prisoners 
instead of putting them to death, their permission to return 
home on the word of honor in order to procure the stipulated 
sum — an indulgence never refused — could only be founded 
on experienced confidence in the principles of chivalry. 

(ii.) Courtesy. — A knight was unfit to remain a member of 
the order if he violated his faith ; he was ill acquainted Avith 
its duties if he proved wanting in courtesy. This word ex- 
pressed the most highly refined good-breeding, founded less 
upon a knowledge of ceremonious politeness — though this 
was not to be omitted — than on the spontaneous modesty, 
self-denial, and respect for others, which ought to spring from 
his heart. Besides the grace which this beautiful virtue threw 
over the habits of social life, it softened down the natural 
roughness of war, and gradually introduced that indulgent 
treatment of prisoners which was almost unknown to antiquity. 
Instances of this kind are continual in the later period of 
the Middle Ages. The behavior of Edward III. to Eustace de 



State OF Society. OF CHIVALKY. 633 

Ribaumont, after the capture of Calais, and that, still more 
exquisitely beavitiful, of the Black Prince to his royal prisoner 
at I'oitiers, are such eminent instances of chivalrous virtue, 
that I omit to repeat them only because they are so well 
known. Those great princes, too, might be imagined to have 
soared far above the ordinary track of mankind. But in truth, 
the knights who surrounded them and imitated their excel- 
lences, were only inferior in opportunities of displaying the 
same virtue. 

(iii.) 3hmificence. — Liberality, indeed, and disdain of money, 
might be reckoned, as I have said, among the essential 
virtues of chivalry. All the romances inculcate the duty of 
scattering their Avealth with profusion, especially towards 
minstrels, pilgrims, and the poorer members of their own 
order. The last, who Avere pretty numerous, had a constant 
right to succor from the opulent ; the castle of every lord who 
respected the ties of knighthood was open with more than 
usual hospitality to the traveller whose armor announced his 
dignity, though it might also conceal his poverty. 

Valor, loyalt}^, courtesy, munificence, formed collectively 
the . character of an accom])lished knight, so far as was dis- 
played in the ordinary tenor of his life, reflecting these virtues 
as an unsullied mirror. Yet something more was required for 
the perfect idea of chivalry, and enjoined by its principles ; an 
active sense of justice, an ardent indignation against wrong, 
a determination of courage to its best end, the prevention or 
redress of injury. It grew up as a salutary antidote in the 
midst of poisons, while scarce any law but that of the strongest 
obtained regard, and the rights of territorial property, which 
are only rights as they conduce to general good, became the 
means of general oppression. The real condition of society, it 
has sometimes been thought, might suggest stories of knight- 
errantry, which were wrought up into the popular romances of 
the Middle Ages. A baron, abusing the advantage of an inac- 
cessible castle in the fastnesses of the Black Forest or the 
Alps, to pillage the neighborhood and confine travellers in Ids 
dungeon, though neither a giant nor a Saracen, was a monster 
not less formidable, and could perhaps as little be destroyed 
without the aid of disinterested bravery. Knight-errantry, 
indeed, as a profession, cannot rationally be conceived to have 
had any existence beyond the precincts of romance. Yet 
tliere seems no impro])ability in supposing that a knight, 
journeying through uncivilized regions in his way to the Holy 
Land, or to the court of a foreign sovereign, might find himself 



634 EVILS PRODUCED BY CHIVALRY. Chap IX. PAiiT IL 

engaged in adventures not very dissimilar to those which are 
the theme of romance. We cannot, indeed, expect to find 
any historical evidence of such incidents. 

The characteristic virtues of cliivalry bear so much resem- 
blance to those which Eastern writers of the same period extol, 
that I am a little disposed to suspect Europe of having derived 
some improvement from imitation of Asia. Though the Cru- 
sades began m abhorrence of intidels, this sentiment wore off 
in some degree before their cessation ; and the regular inter- 
course of commerce, sometimes of alliance, between the Chris- 
tians of Palestine and the Saracens, must have removed part 
of the prejudice, while experience of their enemy's courage 
and generosity in war would with those gallant knights serve 
to lighten the remainder. The romancers expatiate with pleas- 
ure on the merits of Saladin, Avho actually received the honor 
of knighthood from Hugh of Tabaria, his prisoner. An ancient 
poem, entitled the " Order of Chivalry," is founded upon this 
story, and contains a circumstantial account of the ceremonies, 
as well as duties, which the institution required. One or two 
other instances of a similar kind bear witness to the veneration 
in which the name of knight was held among the Eastern 
nations. And certainly the Mohammedan chieftains were for 
the most part abundantly qualified to fulfil the duties of 
European chivalry. Their manners had been polished and 
courteous, while the Western kingdoms were comparatively 
barbarous. 

The principles of chivalry were not, I think, naturally pro- 
ductive of many evils ; for it is unjust to class those acts of 
oppression or disorder among the abuses of knighthood which 
were committed in spite of its regulations, and were only pre- 
vented by them from becoming more extensive. But some 
bad consequences may be more fairly ascribed to the very 
nature of chivalry. I have already mentioned the dissolute- 
ness which almost unavoidably resulted from the prevailing 
tone of gallantry. And yet we sometimes find in the writings 
of those times a spirit of pure but exaggerated sentiment ; and 
the most fanciful refinements of passion are mingled by the 
same poets with the coarsest immorality. An undue thirst for 
military renown was another fault that chivalry must have 
nourished ; and the love of war, sufficiently pernicious in any 
shape, was more founded, as I have observed, on personal feel- 
iiig3 of honor, and less on public spirit, than in the citizens of 
free states. A third reproach may be made to the character 
of knighthood, that it widened the separation between the 



State of Society. ENCOUHAGEMENT OF FRINGES. i)o5 

different classes of society, and contirmed that aristoeratical 
spirit of high birth by wliich the large mass of mankind were 
kept in uajust degradation. Compare the generosity of Ed- 
ward III. towards Eustace de liibaumont at the siege of Calais 
with the harshness of his conduct towards tlie citizens. 

There is perhaps enough in the nature of this institution 
and its congeniality to the habits of a warlike generation to 
account for the respect in which it was held throughout Eu- 
rope. But several collateral circumstances served to invigo- 
rate its spirit. Besides the powerful efficacy with which the 
poetry and romance of the Middle Ages stimulated those sus- 
ceptible minds which were alive to no other literature, we may 
enumerate four distinct causes tending to the promotion of 
chivalry. 

The first of these was the regular scheme of education, 
according to which the sons of gentlemen from the age of 
seven years were brought up in the castles of superior lords, 
where they at once learned the whole discipline of their future 
profession, and imbibed its emulous and enthusiastic s];)irit. 
This was an inestimable advantage to the poorer nobility, 
who could hardly otherwise have given their children the 
accomplishments of their station. From seven to fourteen 
these boys were called pages or varlets ; at fourteen they 
bore the name of esquire. They were instructed in the man- 
agement of arms, in the art of horsemanship, to exercises of 
strength and activity. They became accustomed to obedience 
and courteous demeanor, serving their lord or lady in offices 
which had not yet become derogatory to honorable birth, and 
striving to please visitors, and especially ladies, at the ball or 
banquet. Thus placed in the centre of all that could awaken 
their imaginations, the creed of chivalrous gallantry, super- 
stition, or honor must have made indelible impressions. Pant- 
ing for the glory which neither their strength nor the 
established rules permitted them to anticipate, the young 
scions of chivalry attended their masters to the tournament, 
and even to the battle, and riveted with a sigh the armor they 
were forbidden to wear. 

It was the constant policy of sovereigns to encourage this 
institution, which furnished them with faithful supports, and 
counteracted the independent spirit of feudal tenure. Hence 
they displayed a lavish magniticence in festivals and tourna- 
ments, which may be reckoned a second means of keeping up 
the tone of chivalrous feeling. The kings of France and 
England held solemn or plenary courts at the great festivals, 



03G KJMIGHTHOOD. Cuap. IX. Pakt II. 

or at other times, where the name of knight was always a title 
to admittance ; and the masque of cluvalry, if I may use the 
expression, was acted in pageants and ceremonies fantastical 
enough in our apprehension, but well calculated for those 
heated understandings. Here the peacock and the pheasant, 
birds of high fame in romance, received tlie homage of all true 
knights. The most singular festival of this kind was tliat 
celel)rated by Philip, duke of Burgundy, in 1453. In the 
midst of the banquet a pageant was introduced representing 
tlie calamitous state of religion, in consequence of the recent 
caf)ture of Constantinople. This was followed by the ap- 
pearance of a pheasant, which was laid before the duke, and 
to which the knights present addressed their vows to luider- 
take a crusade, in the following very characteristic preamble : 
" I swear before God my Creator, in the first place, and the 
glorious Virgin his mother, and next, before the ladies and the 
pheasant." Tournaments were a still more powerful incentive 
to emulation. These may be considered to have arisen about 
the middle of the eleventh century ; for though every martial 
people have found diversion in representing the image of war, 
yet the name of tournaments, and the laws that regulated 
them, cannot be traced any higher. Every scenic performance 
of modern times must be tame in comparison of these animat- 
ing combats. At a tournament the space enclosed within the 
lists was surrounded by sovereign princes and their noblest 
barons, by kniglits of established renown, and all that rank 
and beauty had most distinguished among the fair. Covered 
with steel, and known only by their emblazoned shield, or by' 
the favors of their mistresses, a still i)rouder bearing, the 
combatants rushed forward to a strife without enmity, but not 
without danger. Though their weapons were pointless, and 
sometimes only of wood ; though they were bound by the laws 
of tournaments to strike only upon the strong armor of the 
truidi, or, as it was called, between the four limbs, those 
impetuous conflicts often terminated in wounds and death. 
The Church uttered her excommunications in vain against 
so wanton an exposure to peril ; but it was more easy for 
her to excite than to restrain that martial enthusiasm. Vic- 
tory in a tournament was little less glorious, and perhaps at 
the moment more exquisitely felt, than in the field, since no 
battle could assemble such witnesses of valor. " Honor to the 
sons of the brave ! " resounded amidst the din of martial music 
from the lips of the minstrels, as the conqueror advanced to 
receive tlie prize from his queen or his mistress j while the 



State OF Society. MILITARY SERVICE. 637 

surrounding multitude acknowledged in his prowess of that 
day an augury of triumphs that might in more serious contests 
be blended with those of Ids country. 

Both honorary and substantial privileges belonged to the 
condition of knighthood, and had of course a material tendency 
to preserve its credit. A knight was distinguished abroad by 
his crested helmet, his weighty armor, whether of mail or 
plate, bearing his heraldic coat, by his gilded spurs, his horse 
barded with iron, or clothed in liousing of gold ; at home, by 
richer silks and more costly furs than were permitted to 
squires, and by the appro})riated color of scarlet. He was 
addressed by titles of more respect. Many civil offices, by 
rule or usage, were confined to his order. But perlia})S its 
chief privilege was to form one distinct class of nobility, 
extending itself throughout great part of Europe, and almost 
independent, as to its rights and dignities, of any particular 
sovereign. Whoever had been legitimately dubbed a knight 
in one country became, as it were, a citizen of universal 
chivalry, and might assume most of its privileges in any other. 
Nor did he require the act of a sovereign to be thus dis- 
tinguished. It was a fundamental principle that any knight 
miglit confer the order ; responsible only in his own reputation 
if he used lightly so high a prerogative. But as all the 
distinctions of rank might have been confounded if this right 
had been without limit, it was an equally fundamental rule 
that it could only be exercised in favor of gentlemen. 

The privileges annexed to chivalry were of peculiar advan- 
tage to the vavassors, or inferior gentry, as they tended to 
counterbalance the influence wliich territorial wealth threw 
into the scale of their feudal suzerains. Knighthood brought 
these two classes nearly to a level ; and it is owing perhaps in 
no small degree to this institution that the lower nobility saved 
themselves, notwithstanding their poverty, from being con- 
founded with the common people. 

Lastly, the customs of chivalry were maintained by their 
connection with military service. After armies, which we 
may call comparatively regular, had superseded in a great 
degree the feudal militia, princes were anxious to bid high for 
the service of knights, the best equipped and bravest warriors 
of the time, on whose prowess the fate of battles was for a 
long period justly supposed to depend. War brought into 
relief the generous virtues of chivalry, and gave lustre to its 
distinctive privileges. The rank was sought Avith enthusiastic 
emulation through heroic achievements to which, rather thaa 



•C38 DECLINE OF CIIIVALEY. Cuap. IX. Taut IL 

to mere wealth and station, it was considered to belong. In the 
wars of France and England, by far the most splendid period 
of this institution, a promotion of knights followed every suc- 
cess, besides the innumerable cases Avhere the same honor 
rewarded individual bravery. It may here be mentioned that 
an honorary distinction was made between knights-bannerets 
and bachelors. The former were the richest and best accom- 
panied. No man could properly be a banneret unless he pos- 
sessed a certain estate, and could bring a certain number of 
lances into the held. His distinguishing mark was the square 
banner, carried by a squire at the point of his lance ; Avhile 
the knight-bachelor had only the coronet or j)ointed pendant. 
When a banneret was created, the general cut off this pendant 
to render the banner square. But this distinction, however it 
elevated the banneret, gave him no claim to military command, 
except over his own dependents or men-at-arms. Chandos Avas 
still a knight-bachelor when he led part of the prince of 
Wales's army into Spain. He first raised his banner at the 
battle of Navarette ; and the narration that Froissart gives of 
the ceremony will illustrate the manners of chivalry and the 
character of that admirable hero, the conqueror of Du Guesclin 
and pride of English chivalry, whose fame with posterity has 
been a little overshadowed 'by his master's laurels. What 
seems more extraordinary is, tliat mere squires had frequently 
the command over knights. Proofs of this are almost con- 
tinual in Froissart. But the vast estimation in which men 
held the dignity of knighthood led them sometimes to defer it 
for great part of their lives, in hope of signalizing their inves- 
titure by some eminent exploit. 

These appear to have been the chief means of nourishing, 
the princi[)les of chivalry among the nobility of Europe. But 
notwithstanding all encouragement, it underAvent the usual 
destiny of human institutions. St. Palaye, to whom we are 
indebted for so vivid a picture of ancient manners, ascribes 
the decline of chivalry in France to the profusion with which 
the order was lavished under Charles VI., to the establish- 
ment of the companies of ordonnance by Charles VII., and to 
the extension of knightly honors to lawyers, and other men of 
civil occupation, by Francis I. But the real principle of decay 
was something different from these three subordinate circum- 
stances, unless so far as it may bear some relation to the 
second. It was the invention of gunpowder that eventually 
overthrew chivalry. From the time when the use of fire-arms 
became tolerably perfect the weapons of former warfare lost 



State OF Society. DECLINE OF CHIVALRY. 639 

their efficacy, and physical force was reduced to a very subor- 
dinate place in the accijinplishnients of a soldier. The advan- 
tages of a disciplined infantr^^ became more sensible ; and the 
lancers, who continued till almost the end of the sixteenth 
century to charge in a long line, felt the punishment of their 
presumption and indiscipline. Even in the wars of Edward 
III. the disadvantageous tactics of chivalry must have been 
l)erceptible ; but the military art had not been sufficiently 
studied to overcome the prejudices of men eager for individual 
distinction. Tournaments became less frequent ; and, after 
the fatal accident of Henry II., were entirely discontinued in 
France. Notwithstanding the convulsions of the religious 
wars, the sixteenth century was more tranquil than any that 
had preceded ; and thus a large part of the nobility passed 
their lives in pacific habits, and, if they assumed the honors 
of chivalry, forgot their natural connection with military 
prowess. This is far more applical)le to England, where, 
except from the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry VI., 
chivalry, as a military institution, seems not to have found 
a very congenial soil. To these circumstances, immediately 
affecting the military condition of nations, we must add the 
progress of reason and literature, which made ignorance 
discreditable even in a soldier, and exposed the follies of 
romance to a ridicule which they were very ill calculated to 
endure. 

The spirit of chivalry left behind it a more valuable suc- 
cessor. The character of knight gradually subsided in that of 
gentleman ; and the one distinguishes European society in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as much as the other did 
in the preceding ages. A jealous sense of honor, less roman- 
tic, but equally elevated, a ceremonious gallantry and polite- 
ness, a strictness in devotional observances, a higli pride of 
birth and feeling of independence upon any sovereign for the 
dignity it gave, a sympathy for martial honor, though more 
sul)dued by civil habits, are the lineaments which prove an 
indisputable descent. The cavaliers of Charles I. were genu- 
ine successors of Edward's knights ; and the resemblance is 
much more striking if we ascend to the civil wars of the 
League. Time has effaced much also of this gentlemanly, as 
it did before of the chivalrous, character. From the latter 
part of the seventeenth century its vigor and purity have 
undergone a tacit decay, and yielded, perhaps, in every coun- 
try to increasing commercial wealth, more diffused instruction, 
the spirit of general liberty in some, and of servile obsequious- 



640 CIVIL LAW. Chap. IX. Part IL 

ness in others, the modes of life in great cities, and the level- 
ling customs of social intercourse. 

§ 20. It is now time to pass to a very different subject. 
The third head under which I classed the improvements of 
society during the four last centuries of the Middle Ages was 
that of literature. But I must apprise the reader not to ex- 
pect any general view of literary history, even in the most 
abbreviated manner. Such an epitome would not only be 
necessarily superficial, but foreign in many of its details to 
the purposes of this chapter, which, attempting to develop 
the circumstances that gave a new complexion to society, 
considers literature only so far as it exercised a general and 
powerful influence. I shall, therefore, confine myself to four 
points — the study of civil law ; the institution of universities ; 
the application of modern languages to literature, and espe- 
cially to poetry ; and the revival of ancient learning. 

§ 21. (I.) The Study of Civil Law. — The Roman law 
had been nominally preserved ever since the destruction of 
the Empire ; and a great portion of the inhabitants of France 
and Spain, as well as Italy, were governed by its provisions. 
But this was a mere compilation from the Theodosian Code, 
which itself contained only the more recent laws promulgated 
after the establishment of Christianity, with some fragments 
from earlier collections. It was made by order of Alaric, 
king of the Visigoths, about the year 500, and it is frequently 
confounded with the Theodosian Code by writers of the Dark 
Ages. The Code of Justinian, reduced into system after the 
separation of the two former countries from the Greek empire, 
never obtained any authority in them ; nor was it received in 
the part of Italy subject to the Lombards. But that this 
body of laws was absolutely unknown in the West during any 
period seems to have been too hastily supposed. Some of the 
more eminent ecclesiastics, as Hincmar and Ivon of Chartres, 
occasionally refer to it, and bear witness to the regard Avhich 
the Iloman Churcli had uniformly paid to its decisions. 

The revival of the study of jurisprudence, as derived from 
the laws of Justinian, has generally been ascribed to the dis- 
covery made of a copy of the Pandects at Amalfi, in 1135, 
when that city was taken by the Pisans. This fact, though 
not improbable, seems not to rest upon sufficient evidence. 
But its truth is the less material, as it appears to be unequiv- 
ocally proved that the study of .Justinian's system had recom- 
menced before that era. Early in the twelfth century a 
professor named Irnerius opened a school of civil law at 



State OF Society. CIVIL LAW. 641 

Bologna, where lie commented, if not on the Pandects, yet 
on the other books, the Institutes and Code, which were 
sufficient to teach the principles and inspire the love of that 
comprehensive jurisprudence. The study of law, having thus 
revived, made a surprising progress ; within fifty years Lom- 
bardy was full of lawyers, on whom Frederick Barbarossa and 
Alexander III., so hostile in every other respect, conspired to 
shower honors and privileges. The schools of Bologna were 
pre-eminent throughout this century for legal learning. There 
seem also to have been seminaries at Modena and Mantua ; 
nor was any considerable city without distinguished civilians. 
In the next age they became still more numerous, and their 
professors more conspicuous ; and universities arose at Naples, 
Padua, and other places, where the Roman law was the object 
of peculiar regard. 

The fame of this renovated jurisprudence spread very 
rapidly from Italy over other parts of Europe. Students 
flocked from all parts of Bologna ; and some eminent masters 
of that school repeated its lessons in distant countries. One 
of these, Placentinus, explained the Digest at Montpellier be- 
fore the end of the twelfth century ; and the collection of 
Justinian soon came to supersede the Theodosian Code in the 
dominions of Toulouse. Its study continued to flourish in the 
universities of both these cities ; and hence the Roman law, as 
it is exhibited in the system of Justinian, became the rule of 
all tribunals in the southern provinces of France. Its authority 
in Spain is equally great, or at least is only disputed by that of 
the canonists ; and it forms the acknowledged basis of decision 
in all the Germanic tribunals, sparingly modified by the ancient 
feudal customaries, Avhich the jurists of the empire reduc(^ 
within narrow bounds. In the northern parts of France, 
where the legal standard was sought in local customs, the 
civil law met naturally with less regard. But the Code of 
St. Louis borrows from that treasury many of its provisions, 
and it was constantly cited in pleadings before the Parliament 
of Paris, either as obligatory by way of authority, or at least 
as written wisdom, to which great deference was sliown. Yet 
its study was long prohibited in the University at Paris, from 
a disposition of the popes to establish exclusively their decre- 
tals, though the prohibition was silently disregarded. 

As early as the reign of Stephen, Vacarius, a lawyer of 
Bologna, taught at ( )xford with great success ; but the stu- 
dents of scholastic theolog}- opposed themselves, from some 
unexplained reason, to this new jurisprudence, and his lectures 



642 INSTITUTION OF UNIVERSITIES. Chap. IX. Part II. 

were interdicted. About the time of Henry III. and Edward 
I. the civil law acquired some credit in England ; but a system 
entirely incompatible with it had established itself in our 
courts of justice ; and the Roman jurisprudence was not only 
soon rejected, but became obnoxious. Everywhere, how^ever, 
the clergy combined its study with that of their own canons : 
it was a maxim that every canonist must be a civilian, and 
that no one could be a good civilian unless he were also a 
canonist. In all universities degrees are granted in both laws 
conjointly ; and in all courts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction the 
authority of Justinian is cited, when that of Gregory or Clem- 
ent is wanting. 

§ 22. (II.) The Institution of Universities. — The es- 
tablishment of public schools in France is owing to Charle- 
magne. At his accession we are assured that no means of 
obtaining a learned education existed in his dominions ; and, 
in order to restore in some degree the spirit of letters, he was 
compelled to invite strangers from countries where learning 
was not so thoroughly extinguished. Alcuin of England, 
Clement of Ireland, Theodulf of Germany, were the true 
Paladins who repaired to his court. With the help of these 
he revived a few sparks of diligence, and established schools 
in different cities of his empire ; nor was he ashamed to be 
the disciple of that in his own palace, under the care of 
Alcuin. His tAvo next successors, Louis the Debonair and 
Charles the Bald, were also encouragers of letters ; and the 
schools of Lyons, Fulda, Corvey, Rheims, and some other 
cities, might be said to flourish in the ninth century. In these 
were taught the trivium and quadrivium — a long-established 
division of sciences : the first, comprehending grammar, or 
what we now call philology, logic, and rhetoric ; the second, 
music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. But in those 
ages scarcely anybody mastered the latter four ; and to be per- 
fect in the three former was exceedingly rare. All those 
studies, however, were referred to theology, and that in the 
narrowest manner; music, for exam})le, being reduced to 
church chanting, and astronomy to the calculation of Easter. 
Alcuin was, in his old age, against reading the poets ; and this 
discouragement of secular learning was very general ; though 
some, as for instance, Eaban, permitted a slight tincture of it, 
as subsidiary to religions instruction. 

About the latter part of the eleventh century a greater ardor 
for intellectual pursuits began to show itself in Europe, which 
in the twelfth broke out into a flame. This was manifested in 



State of Society. ABELARD. 643 

the numbers who repaired to the j)ublic academies or schools 
of philosophy. None of these grew so early into reputation 
as that of Paris. This cannot, indeed, as has been vainly pre- 
tended, trace its pedigree to Charlemagne. The first who is 
said to have read' lectures at Paris was Remigius of Auxerre, 
about the year 900. For the two next centuries the history of 
this school is very obscure ; and it would be hard to prove an 
unbroken continuity, or at least a dependence and connection, 
of its ])rofessors. In the year 1100 we find William of Cham- 
peaux teaching logic, and apparently some higher parts of 
philosophy, with much credit ; but this preceptor was eclipsed 
by his disciple, afterwards his rival and adversary, Peter Abe- 
lard, to whose brilliant and hardy genius the University of 
Paris appears to be indebted for its rapid advancement. Abe- 
lard was almost the first who awakened mankind in the ages 
of darkness to a sympathy with intellectual excellence. His 
bold theories — not the less attractive, perhaps, for treading 
upon the bounds of heresy — his imprudent vanity, that 
scorned the regularly acquired reputation of older men, 
allured a multitude of disciples who would never have listened 
to an ordinary teacher. It is said that twenty cardinals and 
fifty bishoj)S had been among his hearers. Even in the 
wilderness, where he had erected the monastery of Paraclete, 
he was surrounded by enthusiastic admirers, relinquishing the 
luxuries, if so they might be called, of Paris for the coarse 
living and imperfect accommodation which that retirement 
could afford. But the whole oi' Abelard's life was the ship- 
wreck of genius, and of genius both the source of his own 
calamities and unserviceable to i^osterity. There are few lives 
of literary men more interesting or more diversified by success 
and adversity, by glory and humiliation, by the admiration of 
mankind and the persecution of eneinies ; nor from which, I 
may add, more impressive lessons of moral prudence may be 
derived.-^ One of Abelard's pupils was Peter Lombard, after- 
wards Archbisho]") of Paris, and author of a work called the 
'* Book of Sentences," which obtained the highest authority 
among the scholastic disputants. The resort of students to 
Paris became continually greater; they appear, before the 
year 11()9, to have been divided into nations ; and probably 
they had an elected rector and voluntary rules of discipline 

22 Abelard's pliilosopliical writings were published in 1836 by M. Cousin. See also 
the excellent work of M. ile Remusat, in 1845, with the title Abelard, containing a 
copious account both of the life and writings of that most remarkable man, the father, 
perhaps, of the tlicory as to the nature of universal ideas, now so generally known 
by tile name of conceptualism. 



644 UNIVERSITY OF BOLOGNA. Chap. IX. Part II, 

about the same tinie.-^ This, however, is not decisively proved; 
but in tlie last year of the twelfth century they obtained their 
earliest charter from Philip Augustus. 

The foundation of the University of Oxford is commonly 
ascribed to Alfred, but we have no proof of' its existence as a 
school of learning before the middle of the twelfth century. 
In the reign of Stephen, Vacarius read lectures there upon civil 
law ; and in that of Henry IL, or at least of Eichard I., Ox- 
ford became a very flourishing universit}-, and in 1201, accord- 
ing to Wood, contained 3000 scholars. The earliest charters 
were granted by John. 

If it were necessary to construe the Avord university in the 
strict sense of a legal incorporation, Bologna might lay claim 
to a higher antiquity than either Paris or Oxford. There are 
a few vestiges of studies pursued in that city even in the elev- 
enth century ; but early in the next the revival of the Roman 
jurisprudence, as has been already noticed, brought a throng of 
scholars round the chairs of its professors. Frederick Barba- 
rossa, in 1158, by his authentic or rescript, entitled Habita. took 
these i;nder his protection, and permitted them to be tried in 
civil suits by their own judges. This exemption from the ordi- 
nary tribunals, and even from those of the Church, was natu- 
rally coveted by other academies : it Avas granted to the 
University of Paris by its earliest charter from Philip Augus- 
tus, and to Oxford by John. Prom this time the golden age of 
universities comnuMiced ; and it is hard to say whether they 
were favored more by their sovereigns or by the See of Eome. 
Their history, indeed, is full of struggles with the municipal 
authorities and with the bishops of their several cities, where- 
in they were sometimes the aggressors, and generally the con- 
querors. From all parts of Europe students resorted to these 
renowned seats of learning Avith an eagerness for instruction 
Avhich may astonish those who reflect hoAV little of what Ave now 
deem useful could be imparted. At Oxford, under Henry III., 
it is said tliat there were 30,000 scholars; an exaggeration 
Avhich seems to iniply that the real number Avas very great. A 
respectable contemporary Avriter asserts that there Avere full 
10,000 at Bologna about the same time. I have not observed 
any numerical statement as to I'aris during this age ; but there 
can be no doubt that it Avas move frequented than any other. 

23 The faculty of arts in tlie Univorsity of Paris w!is diviiiod into four nations; 
those of France, I'icardy, Noniiandy, and England. Tliese had distinct .sufTrages in 
tile aiTairs of the university, and consequently, when united, outnumbered the three 
higher faculties of theology, law, and medicine. In 1269, Henry II. of England oilers 
to refer his dispute witli Becket to the provinces of the school of Paris. 



State of Society. ENCOURAGEMENT OF UNIVERSITIES. 645 

At the death of Charles VII. in 1453, it is said to have con- 
tained 25,000 students. In the thirteenth century other uni- 
versities sprang up in different countries — Padua and Naples 
under the patronage of 'Frederick II., a zealous and useful 
friend to letters, Toulouse and Montpellier, Cambridge and 
Salamanca. Orleans, which had long been distinguished as a 
school of civil law, received the privileges of incorporation 
early in the fourteenth century, and Angers before the expira- 
tion of the same age. l^rague, the earliest and most eminent 
of German universities, was founded in 1350 ; a secession from 
thence of Saxon students, in consequence of the nationality 
of the Bohemians and the Hussite schism, gave rise to that of 
Leipsic. The fifteenth century produced several new academi- 
cal foundations in France and Spain. 

A large proportion of scholars in most of those institutions 
were drawn by the love of science from foreign countries. 
The chief universities had their o-wn particular departments of 
excellence. Paris was unrivalled for scholastic theology ; Bo- 
logna and Orleans, and afterwards Bourges, for jurisprudence ; 
Montpellier for medicine. Though national prejudices, as in 
the case of Prague, sometimes interfered with this free resort 
of foreigners to places of education, it was in general a wise 
policy of government, as well as of the universities themselves, 
to encourage it. The thirty-lifth article of tlie peace of Bre- 
tigni provides for the restoration of former privileges to stu- 
dents respectively in the French and English universities. 
Various letters patent will be found in Rymer's collection 
securing to Scottish as well as French natives a safe passage to 
their place of education. The English nation, including how- 
ever the Flemings and Germans, had a separate vote in the 
faculty of arts at Paris ; but foreign students were not, I be- 
lieve, so numerous in the English academies. 

If endowments and privileges are the means of quickening 
a zeal for letters, they were liberally bestowed in the last three 
of the INIiddle Ages. Crevier enumerates fifteen colleges founded 
in the University of Paris during the thirteenth century, be- 
sides one or two of a still earlier date. Two only, or at most 
three, existed in that age at Oxford, and but one at Cambridge. 
In the next tAvo centuries these universities could boast, as 
every one knows, of many splendid foundations, though much 
exceeded in number by those of Paris. Considered_ as ecclesi- 
astical institutions, it is not suri)rising that the universities 
obtained, according to the spirit of their age, an exclusive cog- 
nizance of civil or criminal suits affecting their members. This 



646 SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

jurisdiction was, however, local as well as personal, and in real- 
ity encroached on the regular police of their cities. At Paris 
the privilege turned to a flagrant abuse, and gave rise to many 
scandalous contentions. Still more valuable advantages were 
those relating to ecclesiastical preferments, of which a large 
proportion was reserved in France to academical graduates. 
Something of the same sort, though less extensive, may still 
be traced in the rules respecting plurality of beneflces in our 
English Church. 

§ 23. This remarkable and almost sudden transition from a 
total indifference to all intellectual pursuits cannot be ascribed 
perhaps to any general causes. The restoration of the civil, 
and the formation of the canon law, were indeed eminently 
conducive to it, and a large proportion of scholars in most uni- 
vei'sities confined themselves to jurisprudence. But the chief 
attraction to the studious was the new scholastic philosophy. 
The love of contention, especially with such arms as the art of 
dialectics supplies to an acute understanding, is natural enough 
to mankind. That of speculating vipon the mysterious ques- 
tions of metaphysics and theology is not less so. These dis- 
putes and speculations, howevei", appear to have excited little 
interest till, after the middle of the eleventh century, Roscelin, 
a professor of logic, revived the old question of the Grecian 
schools respecting universal ideas, the reality of which he de- 
nied. This kindled a spirit of metaphysical discussion, which 
Lanfranc and Anselm, successively archbishops of Canterbury, 
kept alive ; and in the next century Abelard and Peter Lombard, 
especially the latter, completed the scholastic system of plii- 
losophizing. The logic of Aristotle seems to have been ])artly 
known in the eleventh century, although that of Augustin was 
perhaps in higher estimation ; in the twelfth it ol)tained more 
decisive influence. His metaphysics, to which the logic might 
be considered as preparatory, were introduced through transla- 
tions from the Arabic, and i)erhaps also from the Greek, early 
in the ensuing century. This work, condemned at first by thi' 
decrees of popes and councils on account of its supposed ten- 
dency to atheism, acquired by degrees an influence to which 
even popes and councils were ol)liged to yield. The Mendicant 
Friars, established throughout Europe in the thirteenth century, 
greatly contributed to promote the Aristotelian philosophy ; 
and its final reception into the orthodox system of the Church 
may chiefly be ascribed to Thonuis Aquinas, the boast of the 
Dominican order, and certainly the most distinguished meta- 
})hysician of the Middle Ages. His authority silenced all scru- 



State OF Society. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 647 

pies as to that of Aristotle, and tlie two philosophers were 
treated with equally implicit deference by the later schoolmen. 

This scholastic philosophy, so famous for several ages, has 
since passed away and been forgotten. The history of litera- 
ture, like that of empire, is full of revolutions. Our public 
libraries are cemeteries of departed reputation, and the dust 
accumulating upon their untouched volumes speaks as forcibly 
as the grass that waves over the ruins of Babylon. Few, very 
few, for a hundred years i^ast, have broken the repose of the 
immense works of the school-men. Yet we cannot deny that 
lioscelin, Anselm, Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, 
Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham were men of acute 
and even profound understandings, the giants of their OAvn 
generation. Even with the slight knowledge we possess of their 
tenets, there appear through the cloud of repulsive technical 
barbarisms rays of meta})hysical genius which this age ought 
not to despise. Thus in the works of Anselm is foun.d the cel- 
ebrated argument of Des Cartes for the existence of a Deity, 
deduced from the idea of an infinitely prefect being. One 
great object that most of the school-men had in view was to 
establish tlie principles of natural theology by abstract reason- 
ing. This reasoning Avas doubtless liable to great difficulties. 
But it would be difficult to mention any theoretical argument 
to prove the divine attributes, or any objection capable of being 
raised against the proof, which we do not find in some of the 
scholastic philosophers. The most celebrated subjects of dis- 
cussion, and those on which this class of reasoners were most 
divided, were the reality of universal ideas, considered as ex- 
trinsic to the human mind and the freedom of will. These 
have not ceased to occupy the thoughts of metaphysicians. 

But all discovery of truth by means of these controversies 
was rendered hopeless by two insurmountable obstacles — the 
authority of Aristotle and that of the Church. Wherever 
obsequious reverence is substituted for bold inquirj^, truth, if 
it is not already at hand, will never be attained. The" scholas- 
tics did not understand Aristotle, whose original writings they 
could not read; but his name was received with implicit faith. 
They learned his peculiar nomenclature, and fancied that he 
had given them realities. The authority of the Church did 
them still more harm. It has been said, and probably with 
much truth, that their metaphysics were injurious to their the- 
ology. But I must observe in return that their theology was 
equally injurious to their metaphysics. Their disputes con- 
tinually turned upon questions either involving absurdity and 



C48 SCHOLASTIC rillLOSOPIIY. Cuap. IX. Pakt II. 

contradiction, or at best inscrutable by human comprehension. 
Those who assert the greatest antiquity of the Roman Catholic 
doctrine as to the real }n'esence allow that both the word and 
the definition of transubstantiation are owing to the scholastic 
writers. Their subtleties were not always so well received. 
They reasoned, at imminent peril of being charged with her- 
esy, which Koscelin, Abelard, Lombard, and Ockham did not 
escai3e. In the virulent factions that arose out of their meta- 
physical quarrels, either party was eager to expose its adver- 
sary to detraction and persecution. The Nominalists were 
accused, one hardly sees why, with reducing, like Sabellius, the 
])ersons of the Trinity to modal distinctions. The llealists, 
witli more i3retence, incurred the imputation of holding a lan- 
guage that savored of atheism. In the controversy which the 
Dominicans and Franciscans, disci])les respectively of Thomas 
Aquinas and Duns Scotus, maintained about grace and free- 
will, it was of course still more easy to deal in mutual re- 
proaches of heterodoxy. But the school-men were in general 
prudent enough not to defy the censures of the Church ; and 
the popes, in return for the support they gave to all exorbitant 
l)retensions of the Holy See, connived at this factious wran- 
gling, which threatened no serious mischief, as it did not pro- 
ceed from any independent spirit of research. Yet, with all 
their apparent conformity to the received creed, there was, as 
might be expected from the circumstances, a great deal of real 
deviation from orthodoxy, and even of infidelity. The scholas- 
tic mode of dispute, admitting of no termination and producing 
no conviction, was the sure cause of scepticism ; and the sys- 
tem of Aristotle, especially with the commentaries of Aver- 
roes, bore an aspect very unfavorable to natural religion. The 
Aristotelian i)hilosophy, even in the hands of the Master, was 
like a barren tree that conceals its want of fruit by profusion 
of leaves. But the scholastic ontology was much worse. What 
could be .more trifling than disquisitions about the nature of 
angels, their modes of operation, their means of conversing, or 
(for these were distinguished) the morning and evening state 
of their understandings? Into such follies the school-men 
appear to have launched, partly because there was less danger 
of running against a heresy in a matter where the Church had 
defined so little — partly from their presumption, which dis- 
dained all inquiries into the human mind, as merely a part of 
phj'sics — and in no small degree through a spirit of mystical 
fanaticism, derived from the Oriental philosophy and the later 
Platonists, which blended itself with the cold-blooded techni- 



State of Society. SCHOLASTIC rniLOSOPHY. 649 

calities of the Aristotelian school. But tliis unproductive 
waste of the faculties could not last forever. Men discovered 
that they had given their time for the promise of wisdom, and 
been cheated in tlie bargain. What John of Salisbury observes 
of the Parisian dialecticians in his own time, that after several 
years' absence he found them not a step advanced, and still 
employed in urging and parrying the same arguments, was 
equally applicable to the period of centuries. After three or 
four hundred years, the scholastics had not untied a single 
knot, nor added one unequivocal truth to the domain of phi- 
losophy. As this became more evident, the enthusiasm for 
that kind of learning declined ; after the middle of the four- 
teenth century few distinguished teachers arose among the 
school-men, and at the revival of letters their pretended science 
had no advocates left but among the prejudiced or ignorant ad- 
herents of established systems. How different is the state of 
genuine philosophy, the zeal for which will never wear out by 
length of time or change of fashion, because the inquirer, un- 
restrained by authority, is ])erpetually cheered by the discovery 
of truth in researches, which the boundless riches of nature 
seem to render indefinitely ])rogressive ! 

Yet, upon a general consideration, the attention paid in the 
universities to scholastic philosophy may be deemed a source 
of im])rovement in the intellectual character, when we compare 
it with the ])erfect ignorance of some jireceding ages. AVhether 
the same industry would not have been more profitably di- 
rected if the love of metaphysics had not intervened, is an- 
other question. Philology, or the principles of good taste, 
degenerated through the prevalence of school-logic. The Latin 
compositions of the twelfth century are better than those of 
the three that followed — at least on the northern side of the 
Alps. I do not, however, conceive that any real correctness 
of taste or general elegance of style was likely to subsist in 
so imperfect a condition of society. These qualities seem to 
require a certain harmonious correspondence in the tone of 
manners before they can estal)lish a prevalent influence over 
literature. A more real evil Avas^the diverting of studious men 
from mathematical science. Early in the twelfth century sev- 
eral persons, chiefly English, had brought into Europe some of 
the Arabian writings on geometry and physics. In the thir- 
teenth the works of Euclid were commented upon by Campano, 
and Koger Bacon was fully acquainted with them.-* Algebra, as 

-* The resemblanre between Rofjer Bacon and his greater namesake is very re- 
inarliable. Whether Lord Bacou ever read the Opus Majus, 1 know not; but it is 



650 MODERN LANGUAGES. Cuap. IX. Pakt II. 

far as the Arabians knew it, extending to qnadratic equations, 
was actually in the hands of some Italians at the commencement 
of the same age, and preserved for almost three hundred years 
as a secret, though without any conception of its importance. 
As abstract mathematics require no collateral aid, they may 
reach the highest perfection in ages of general barbarism ; 
and there seems to be no reason why, if the course of study 
had been directed that way, there should not have arisen a 
Newton or a Laplace, instead of an Aquinas or an Ockham. 
The knowledge displayed by Roger Bacon and by Albertus 
Magnus, even in the mixed mathematics, under every disad- 
vantage from the imperfection of instruments and the want of 
recorded experience, is sufficient to inspire us with regret that 
their contemporaries were more inclined to astonishment than 
to emulation. These inquiries, indeed, were subject to the 
ordeal of fire, the great purifier of books and men ; for if the 
metaphysician stood a chance of being burned as a heretic, 
the natural philosopher was in not less jeopardy as a magician. 
§24. (III.) Cultivatiojst OF Modern Languages. — Afar 
more substantial cause of intellectual improvement was the 
development of those new languages that sprang out of the 
corruption of Latin. For three or four centuries after what 
was called the Romance tongue was spoken in France, 
there remain but few vestiges of its employment in writing ; 
though we cannot draw an absolute inference from our 
want of proof, and a critic of much authority supposes trans- 
lations to have been made into it for religious purposes from 
the time of Charlemagne. During this period the language 
was split into two very separate dialects, the regions of 
which may be considered, though by no means strictly, as 
divided by the Loire. These were called the langue d'Oil 
and the langue d'Oc ; or, in more modern terms, the French 
and Proven9al dialects. In the latter of these I know of 
notliing which can even by name be traced beyond the year 
1100. About that time Gregory de Bechada, a gentleman 
of Limousin, recorded the memorable events of the first 
Crusade, then recent, in a metrical history of great length. 
This poem has altogether perished ; which, considering the 
popularity of its subject, would probably not have been the 

singular that his favorite quaint expression, prmrogativm scientiarum, should be 
found in that worlv, though not used with the same allusion to the Roman comitia. 
And whoever reads the sixth part of the Opus Majus, upon experimental science, 
must be struck by it as the prototype, in spirit, of the Novum Organum. The same 
sanguine and sometimes rash confldenee in the elVect of physical discoveries, the 
same fondness for experiment, the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning, 
pervade both works. 



State of Society. TROUBADOURS. (^51 

case if it had possessed any merit. But very soon afterwards 
a niultitude of poets, like a swarm of summer insects, ap- 
peared in tl;e southern provinces of France. These were the 
celebrated troubadours, whose fame depends far less on their 
positive excellence than on the darkness of preceding ages, on 
the temporary sensation they excited, and their permanent 
influence on the state of European poetry. From William, 
count of Poitoii, the earliest troubadour on record, who 
died in 1126, to their extinction, about the end of the next 
century, there were probably several hundred of these versi- 
fiers in the language of Provence, though not always natives 
of France. Among those ])oets are reckoned a king of Eng- 
land (Richard L), two of Aragon, one of Sicily, a dauphin of 
Auvergne, a count of Foix, a prince of Orange, many noble- 
men, and several ladies. One can hardly pretend to account 
for this sudden and transitory love of verse ; but it is mani- 
festly one symptom of the rapid impulse which the human 
mind received in the twelfth century, and contemporaneous 
with the severer studies that began to flourish in the univer- 
sities. It was encouraged by the prosperity of Languedoc 
and Provence, undisturbed, comparatively with other coun- 
tries, by internal warfare, and disposed by the temper of their 
inhabitants to feel with voluptuous sensibility the charm of 
music and amorous poetry. But the tremendous storm that 
fell upon Languedoc in the crusade against the Albigeois 
shook off the flowers of Provencal verse ; and the final ex- 
tinction of the fief of Toulouse, with the removal of the counts 
of Provence to Naples, deprived the troubadours of their most 
eminent patrons. An attempt was made in the next century 
to revive them, by distributing prizes for the best composi- 
tion in the Floral Games of Toulouse, which have sometimes 
been erroneously referred to a higher antiquity ; but it did 
not establish the name of any Provencal poet. Nor can we 
deem these fantastical solemnities, styled Courts of Love, 
where ridiculous questions of metaphysical gallantry were 
debated by poetical advocates, under the presidency and 
arbitration of certain ladies, much calculated to bring forward 
any genuine excellence. They illustrate, however, what is 
more immediately my own object — the general ardor for 
poetry and the manners of those chivalrous ages. 

§ 25. The great rei)utation acquired by the troubadours, 
and the panegyrics lavished on some of them by Dante and 
Petrarch, excited a curiosity- among literary men wliich 
has been a good deal disappointed by further acquaintance. 



652 FRENCH METRICAL TRANSLATIONS. Cuap. IX. Pakt II. 

Translations from part of this collection, with memorials of 
tlie writers, were published by Millot ; and we certainly do 
not often meet with jjassages in his three volumes which 
give us any poetical pleasure. The troubadours chiefly con- 
fined themselves to subjects of love, or rather gallantry, and 
to satires (sirventes), which are sometimes keen and spirited. 
No romances of chivalry, and hardly any tales, are found 
among their works. There seems a general deficiency of im- 
agination, and especially of that vivid description which dis- 
tinguishes works of genius in the rudest period of society. 
In the poetry of sentiment, their favorite province, they sel- 
dom attain any natural expression, and consequently pro- 
duce no interest. It must be allowed, however, that we can- 
not judge of the troubadours at a greater disadvantage than 
through the prose translations of Millot. Their poetry was 
entirely of that class which is allied to music, and excites 
the fancy or feelings rather by the power of sound than any 
stimulancy of imagery and passion. Possessing a flexible 
and harmonious language, they invented a variety of met- 
rical arrangements perfectly new to the nations of Europe. 
The Latin hymns were striking but monotonous, the metre 
of the northern French unvaried; but in Proven9al poetry, 
almost every length of verse, from two syllables to twelve, 
and the ipost intricate disposition of rhymes, were at the 
choice of the troubadour. The canzoni, the sestine — all the 
lyric metres of Italy and Spain, were borrowed from his 
treasury. With such a command of poetical sounds, it was 
natural that he should inspire delight into ears not yet ren- 
dered familiar to the artifices of verse ; and even now the 
fragnients of these ancient lays, quoted by M. Sismondi and 
j\I. Ginguene, seem to possess a sort of charm that has evap- 
orated in translation. Upon this harmony, and upon the fa- 
cility Avith which mankind are apt to be deluded into an 
admiration of exaggerated sentiment in poetry, they depended 
for their influence ; and however vapid the songs of l*ro- 
vence may seem to our apprehensions, they were undoubtedly 
the source from which poetry for many centuries derived a 
great portion of its habitual language. 

§ 26, It is probable that the Northern Romance, or what 
we properly call French, was not formed until the tenth 
century. Translations of some books of Scripture and acts 
of saints were made about 1100, or even earlier, and there 
are French sermons of St. Bernard, from which extracts have 
been published, in the royal library at Paris. In 1126, a 



State of Society. NOKMAN ROMANCES AND TALES. C53 

charter was granted by Louis VI. to the city of Beaiivais in 
French. Metrical compositions are in general the first liter- 
ature of a nation, and even if no distinct })roof could be ad- 
duced, we might assume their existence before the twellth 
century. There is, however, evidence, not to mention the 
fraguieuts printed by Le lioeuf, of certain lives of saints 
translated into French verse by Thibault de Vernon, a canon 
of liouen, before the middle of the preceding age. And 
we are told that Taillefer, a Norman minstrel, recited a song 
or romance on the deeds of Roland, before the army of his 
countrymen, at the battle of Hastings in 1066. Philip de 
Than, a Norman subject of Henry L, seems to be the earliest 
poet whose works as well as name have reached us, unless we 
admit a French translation of the work of one Marbode upon 
precious stones to be more ancient. This de Than wrote a set 
of rules for computation of time and an account of different 
calendars. A happy theme for inspiration, without doubt ! 
Another performance of the same author is a treatise on liirds 
and beasts, dedicated to Adelaide, queen of Henry I. But a 
more famous votary of the muses was Wace, a native of Jersey, 
who, about the beginning of Henry II. 's reign, turned Geoffrey 
of Monmouth's history into French metre. Besides this poem, 
called le Brut d'Angleterre, he composed a series of metrical 
histories, containing the transactions of the dukes of Nor- 
mandy, from Hollo, their great progenitor, who gave name to 
the Roman de Ron, down to his own age. Other productions 
are ascribed to Wace, who was at least a prolific versifier, and, 
if he seem to deserve no higher title at present, has a claim 
to indulgence, and even to esteem, as having far excelled his 
contemporaries, without any superior advantages of knowledge. 
In emulation, however, of his fame, several Norman writers 
addicted themselves to composing chronicles of devotional 
treatises in metre. The ccnirt of our Norman kings was to the 
early poets in the Langue d'Oil what those of Aries and Tou- 
louse were to the troubadours. Henry I. was fond enough of 
literature to obtain the surname of Beauclerc; Henry II. was 
more indisputably an encourager of poetry ; and Richard I. has 
left compositions of his own in the two dialects spoken in 
France. 

If the poets of Normandy had never gone beyond historical 
and religious subjects, they would probably have had less claim 
to our attention than their brethren of Provence ; but a different 
and far more interesting species of composition began to be 
cultivated in the latter part of the t\velfth century. With- 



654 NORMAN IIOMANCES AND TALES. Cuap. IX. Paut II. 

out entering upon the controverted question as to tlie origin of 
romantic tictions, referred by one party to tire Scandinavians, 
by a second to tlie Arabs, by otliers to tlie natives of P>rittany, 
it is manifest that tlie actual stories upon which one early and 
numerous class of romances was founded are related to the 
traditions of the last people. These are such as turn upon 
the fable of Arthur ; for though we are not entitled to deny the 
existence of such a personage, his story seems chiefly the 
creation of Celtic vanity. Traditions current in Brittany, 
though probably derived from this island, became the basis of 
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin prose, which, as has been seen, 
was transfused into French metre by Wace. ' The vicinity of 
Normandy enabled its poets to enrich their narratives with 
other Armorican fictions, all relating to the heroes who had 
surrounded the table of the son of XJther. An equally imagi- 
nary history of Charlemagne gave rise to a new family of 
romances. The authors of these fictions were called trouveurs, 
a name obviously identical with that of troubadours ; but 
except in name there was no resemblance between the min- 
strels of the northern and southern dialects. The invention of 
one class was turned to description, that of the other to senti- 
ment; the first were epic in their form and style, the latter 
almost always lyric. We cannot, i^erhaps, give a better no- 
tion of their dissimilitude than by saying that one school 
produced Chaucer, and the other Petrarch. Besides these 
romances of chivalry, the trouveurs displayed their powers of 
lively narration in comic tales or fabliaux (a name sometimes 
extended to the higher romance), which have aided the 
inuigination of Boccace and La Fontaine. These compositions 
are certainly more entertaining than those of the troubadours ; 
but, contrary to what I have said of the latter, they often gain 
by appearing in a modern dress. Their versification, which 
doubtless had its charm when listened to around the hearth 
of an ancient castle, is very languid and prosaic, and suitable 
enough to the tedious prolixity into which the narrative is apt 
to fall ; and though we find many sallies of that arch and 
sprightly simplicity Avhicli characterizes the old language of 
France as well as England, it requires, upon the whole, a 
factitious taste to relish these Norman tales, considered as 
poetry in the higher sense of the word, distinguished from 
metrical fiction. 

A manner very different from that of the fabliaux was 
adopted in the Koman de la Eose, begun by William de Loris 
about 1250, and completed by John cle Meun half a century 



State of Socikty. WORKS IN FRENCH PROSE. 655 

later. This poem, which contains about 16,000 lines in the 
usual octosyllable verse, from which the early French writers 
seldom deviated, is an allegorical vision, wherein love and the 
other passions or qualities connected with it pass over the 
stage, Avithout the intervention, I believe, of any less abstract 
personages. Though similar allegories were not unknown to 
the ancients, and, which is more to the purpose, may be 
found in other productions of the thirteenth century, none 
had been constructed so elaborately as that of the Roman de 
la Rose. Cold and tedious as we now consider this species of 
poetry, it originated in the creative power of imagination, and 
appealed to more refined feeling than the common metrical 
narratives could excite. This poem Avas highly popular in the 
Middle Ages, and became the source of those numerous alle- 
gories which had not ceased in the seventeenth century. 

The French language was employed in prose as well as in 
metre. Indeed it seems to have had almost an exclusive 
privilege in this respect. " The language of Oil," says Dante, 
in his treatise on vulgar speech, prefers its claim to be ranked 
above those of Oc and Si (Provencal and Italian), on the 
ground that all translations or compositions in prose have 
been written therein, from its greater facility and grace, such 
as the books compiled from the Trojan and Roman stories, 
the delightful fables about Arthur, and many other works of 
history and science." I have mentioned already the sermons 
of St. Bernard and translations from Scripture. The laws of 
the kingdom of Jerusalem purport to have been drawn up 
immediately after the first crusade, and, though their lan- 
guage has been materially altered, there seems no doubt that 
they were originally compiled in French. Besides some 
charters, there are said to have been prose romances before 
the year 1200. Early in the next age Ville Hardouin, sen- 
eschal of Campagne, recorded the capture of Constantinople 
in the fourth crusade, an expedition the glory and reward of 
which he had personally shared, and, as every original work 
of prior date has either perished or is of small importance, 
may be deemed the father of French prose. The Establish- 
ments of St. Louis and the law treatise of Beaumanoir fill up 
the interval of the thirteenth century ; and before its conclu- 
sion we must suppose the excellent memoirs of Joinville to 
have been composed, since they are dedicated to Louis X. in 
1315, when the author could hardly be less than iiinety years 
of age. Without prosecuting any further the history of French 
literature, I will only mention the translations of Livy and 



656 EAKLY ITALIAN WRITERS. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

Salhist, made in tlie reign and by the order of John, with 
tliose of Caesar, Suetonius, Ovid, and parts of Cicero, wliich 
are due to his successor, Charles V. 

§ 27. I confess myself wholly uninformed as to the origi- 
nal formation of the Spanish language, and as to the epoch of 
its separation into the two principal dialects of Castile and 
Portugal or Gallicia ; nor should I perhaps have alluded to 
the literature of that peninsula, were it not for a remarkable 
poem which shines out among the minor lights of those 
times. This is a metrical life of the Cid Ruy Diaz, written 
in a barbarous style and with the rudest inequality of meas- 
ure, but with a truly Homeric warmth and vivacity of deline- 
ation. It is much to be regretted that the author's name has 
perished ; but its date has been referred by some to the 
middle of the twelfth century, while the hero's actions were 
yet recent, and before the taste of Spain had been corrupted 
by the Provencal troubadours, whose extremely different man- 
ner would, if it did not pervert the poet's genius, at least have 
impeded his popularity. A very competent judge has pro- 
nounced the poem of the Cid to be " decidedly and beyond 
comparison the finest in the Spanish language." It is at 
least superior to any that was written in Europe before the 
appearance of Dante. ^^ 

§ 28. A strange obscurity envelops the infancy of the Ital- 
ian language. Though it is certain that grammatical Latin 
had ceased to be employed in ordinary discourse, at least 
from the time of Charlemagne, we have not a single passage 
of undisputed authenticity in the current idiom for nearly 
four centuries afterwards. Though Italian phrases are mixed 
up in the barbarous jargon of some charters, not an instrument 
is extant in that language before the year 1200. Nor is there 
a vestige of Italian poetry older than a few fragments of 
Ciullo d'Alcamo, a Sicilian, who must have written before 
1193, since he mentions Saladin as then living. This may 
strike us as the more remarkable when we consider the politi- 
cal circumstances of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
turies. From the struggles of her spirited re})ublics against 
the emperors and their internal factions Ave might, upon all 
general reasoning, anticipate the early use and vigorovis culti- 
vation of their native language. Even if it were not yet ripe 
for historians and philosophers, it is strange that no poet 

-^ An extract from tliis poem was published in 1808 by Mr. Soutliey, at tlie end of 
his " Chronicles of the Cid." M. Sismondi has given other passages in the third 
volume of his "History of Soutlniru Literature." 



State of society. 



BANTE. 657 



should have been insi)irt'd witli songs of triumph or invective 
by the various fortunes of his country. But, on the contrary, 
the poets of Lombardy became troubadours, and wasted their 
genius in Provencal hive-strains at tlie courts of princes. The 
Mihmese and otlier Lombard dialects were, indeed, exceedingly 
rude ; but this rudeness separated them more decidedly from 
Latin ; nor is it jiossible that the Lombards could have em- 
ployed that language intelligibly for any public or domestic 
purpose. And indeed, in the earliest Italian compositions 
that have been published, the new language is so thoroughly 
formed, that it is natural to infer a very long disuse of that 
from which it was derived. The Sicilians claim the glory of 
having first adapted their own harmonious dialect to poetry. 
Frederick II. both encouraged their art and cultivated it ; 
among the very first essays of Italian verse we find his pro- 
ductions and those of his chancellor, Piero delle Vigne. Thus 
Italy was destined to owe the beginnings of her national 
literature to a foreigner and an enemy. These poems are very 
short and few ; those ascribed to St. Francis about the same 
time are hardly distinguishable from prose ; but after the 
middle of the thirteenth century the Tuscan poets awoke to 
a sense of the beauties which their native language, refined 
from the im])urities of vulgar speech, could display, and the 
genius of Italian literature Avas rocked upon the restless waves 
of the Florentine democracy. Ricordano Malespini, the first 
historian, and nearly the first prose writer in Italian, left 
memorials of the republic down to the year 1281, which was 
that of his death, and it was continued by Giaeehetto Males- 
pini to 128(). These are little inferior in purity of style to 
the best Tuscan authors ; for it is the singular fate of that 
language to have spared itself all intermediate stages of refine- 
ment, and, starting the last in the race, to have arrived al- 
most instantaneously at the goal. There is an interval of not 
much more than half a century between the short fragment of 
Ciullo d'Alcamo, mentioned above, and the poems of Guido 
Guinizzelli, Guitone d'Arezzo, and Guido Cavalcante, which, 
in their diction and turn of thought, are sometimes not 
unwortliy of Petrarch. 

§ 20. But at the beginning of the next age arose a much 
greater genius, the true father of Italian poetry, and the first 
name in the literature of the Middle Ages. This was Dante, 
or Durante Alighieri, born in 1265, of a respectable family 
at Florence. Attached to the Guelf party, which had then 
obtained a final ascendency over its rival, he might justly 



658 DANTE. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

promise himself the natural reward of talents under a free 
government — public trust and the esteem of his compatriots. 
But the Guelfs unhappily were split into two factions, the 
Bianchi and the Nevi, with the former of whom, and, as it 
proved, the unsuccessful side, Dante was connected. In 1300 
he filled the office of one of the priori, or chief magistrates, at 
Florence ; and having manifested in this, as was alleged, some 
partiality towards the Bianchi, a sentence of proscription 
passed against him about two years afterwards, when it 
became the turn of the opposite faction to triumph. Banished 
from his country, and baffled in several efforts of his friends 
to restore their fortunes, he had no resource but at the courts 
of the Scalas at Verona, and other Italian princes, attaching 
himself in adversity to the imperial interests, and tasting, ii; 
his own language, the bitterness of another's bread. In this 
state of exile he finished, if he did not commence, his great 
poem, the Divine Comedy — a representation of the three 
kingdoms of futurity. Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, divided 
into one hundred cantos, and containing about 14,000 lines. 
He died at Ravenna, in 1321. 

Dante is among the very few who have created the national 
poetry of their country ; for notwithstanding the polished ele- 
gance of some early Italian verse, it had been confined to 
amorous sentiment, and it was yet to be seen that the 
language could sustain, for a greater length than any existing 
poem except the Iliad, the varied style of narration, reasoning, 
and ornament. Of all writers he is the most unquestionably 
original. Virgil was indeed his insi:»iring genius, as he 
declares himself, and as may sometimes be perceived in his 
diction ; but his tone is so peculiar and characteristic, that few 
readers would be willing at first to acknowledge any resem- 
blance. He possessed in an extraordinary degree a command 
of language, the abuse of which led to his obscurity and 
licentious innovations. No poet ever excelled him in concise- 
ness, and in the rare talent of finishing his pictures by a 
few bold touches — the merit of Pindar in his better hours. 
How prolix would the stories of Francesca or of Ugolino have 
become in tlie hands of Ariosto, or of Tasso, or of Ovid, or of 
Spenser ! This excellence, indeed, is most striking in the first 
part of his poem. Having formed his plan so as to give an 
equal length to the three regions of his spiritual world, he 
found himself \inable to vary the images of hope or beatitude, 
and the Paradise is a continual accumulation of descriptions, 
separately beautiful, but uniform and tedious. Though images 



State of Society. DANTE. 659 

derived from light and music are the most pleasing, and can 
be borne longer in poetry than any others, their sweetness 
palls upon the sense by frequent repetition, and we require 
the intermixture of sharper flavors. Yet there are detached 
passages of great excellence in this third part of Dante's 
poem ; and even in the long theological discussions, which 
occupy the greater proportion of its thirty-three cantos, it is 
impossible not to admire the enunciation of abstract positions 
with remarkable energy, conciseness, and sometimes perspi- 
cuity. The first twelve cantos of Purgatory are an almost 
continual flow of soft and brilliant poetry. The last seven are 
also very splendid; but there is some heaviness in the inter- 
mediate parts. Fame has justly given the preference to the 
Inferno, which displays throughout a more vigorous and 
masterly conception ; but the mind of Dante cannot be 
thoroughly appreciated without a perusal of his entire poem. 

The most forced and unnatural turns, the most barbarous 
licenses of idiom, are found in this poem, whose power of ex- 
pression is at other times so peculiarly happy. His style is 
indeed generally free from those conceits of thought which 
discredited the other poets of his country ; but no sense is too 
remote for a word which he finds convenient for his measure or 
his rhyme. It seems, indeed, as if he never altered a line on 
account of the necessity of rhyme, but forced another, or per- 
haps a third, into company with it. For many of his faults no 
sufficient excuse can be made. But it is candid to remember 
that Dante, writing almost in the infancy of a language which 
he helped to create, was not to anticipate that words which 
he borrowed from the Latin and from the provincial dialects 
would by accident, or through the timidity of later writers, 
lose their ])lace in the classical idiom of Italy. If Petrarch, 
Bembo, and a few more, had not aimed rather at purity than 
copiousness, the phrases which now a])pear barbarous, and are 
at least obsolete, might have been fixed by use in poetical 
language. 

The great characteristic excellence of Dante is elevation of 
sentiment, to which his compressed diction and the emphatic 
cadences of his measure admirably correspond. We read him 
not as an amusing poet, but as a master of moral wisdom, with 
reverence and awe. Fresh from the deep and serious, though 
somewhat barren, studies of philosophy, and schooled in the 
severer discipline of experience, he has made of his poem a 
mirror of his mind and life, the register of his solicitudes and . 
sorrows, and of the speculations in which he sought to escape 



660 DAKTE. Chap. IX. Part II. 

their recollection. The banished magistrate of Florence, the 
disciple of Brunetto Latini, the statesman accustomed to trace 
the varying fluctuations of Italian faction, is forever before 
our eyes. For this reason, even the prodigal display of erudi- 
tion, which in an epic poem would be entirely misplaced, in- 
creases the respect we feel for the poet, though it does not tend 
to the reader's gratitication. Except Milton, he is much the 
most learned of all the great poets, and, relatively to his age, 
far more learned than Milton. In one so highly endowed by 
nature, and so consummate by instruction, we may well sym- 
pathize with a resentment which exile and poverty rendered 
perpetually fresh. The heart of Dante was naturally sensible, 
and even tender ; his poetry is full of simple comparisons from 
rural life ; and the sincerity of his early passion for Beatrice 
pierces through the veil of allegory which surrounds her. But 
the memory of his injuries pursues him into the immensity of 
eternal light ; and, in the company of saints and angels, his 
unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence. 

This great poem was received in Italy with that enthusiastic 
admiration which attaches itself to works of genius only in 
ages too rude to listen to the envy of competitors or the fastid- 
iousness of critics. Almost every library in that country con- 
tains manuscript copies of the Divine Comedy, and an account 
of those Avho have abridged or commented upon it would swell 
to a volume. It was thrice printed in the year 1472, and at 
least nine times within the fifteenth century. The city of 
Florence in 1373, with a magnanimity which almost redeems 
her original injustice, appointed a public professor to read lec- 
tures upon Dante ; and it was hardly less honoraljle to the poet's 
memory that the first person selected for this office was Boccac- 
cio. The universities of Pisa and I'iacenza imitated this ex- 
ample ; but it is probable that Dante's abstruse philosophy was 
often more regarded in their cliairs than his higher excellences. 
Italy indeed, and all Euro]ie, had reason to be ])roud of such a 
master. Since Claudian, tliere had been seen for nine hundred 
years no considerable body of ])oetry, except the Spanish ])oem 
of the Cid, of which no one liad heard beyond the peninsnla, 
that could be said to pass mediocrity ; and we must go much 
farther back than Claudian to find anyone capable of being 
com]iared with Dante. His appearance made an epoch in the 
intellectual history of modern nations, and banished the dis- 
couraging suspicion which long ages of lethargy tended to ex- 
cite, that nature had exhausted her fertility in the great poets 
of Greece and Rome. It was as if, at some of the ancient 



State of Society. PETRARCH. 661 

games, a stranger had appeared upon the }dain, and thrown his 
quoit among the marks of former casts wliich tradition luid 
ascribed to the demigods. But the admiration of Dante, 
though it gave a general impulse to the human mind, did not 
produce imitators. I am unaware, at least, of any writer, in 
whatever language, who can be said to have followed the steps 
of Dante : I mean not so much in his subject as in the charac- 
ter of his genius and style. His orbit is still all his own, and 
the track of his wheels can never be confounded with that of 
a rival. 

§ 30. In the same year that Dante was expelled from Flor- 
ence, a notary, by name Petracco, was involved in a similar 
banishment. Retired to Arezzo, he there became the father of 
Francis Petrarch. This great man shared, of course, during 
his early years, in the adverse fortune of his fainily, which he 
was invincibly reluctant to restore, according to his father's 
wish, by tlie profession of jurisprudence. The strong bias of 
nature determined him to polite letters and poetry. These 
are seldom the fountains of wealth ; yet they would perhaps 
have been such to Petrarch, if his temper could have borne the 
sacrilice of liberty for any worldly acquisitions. At the city 
of Avignon, where his parents had latterly resided, his grace- 
ful appearance and the reputation of his talents attracted one 
of the Colonna family, then P>ishop of Lombes, in Gascony. 
In him, and in other members of that great house, never so 
illustrious as in the fourteenth century, he experienced the 
union of patronage and friendship. This, however, was not 
confined to the Colonnas. Unlike Dante, no poet w^as ever so 
liberally and sincerely encouraged by the great ; nor did any, 
perhaps, ever carry to that perilous intercourse a spirit more 
irritably independent, or more free from interested adulation. 
He praised his friends lavishly because he loved them ardently ; 
but his temper was easily susceptible of offence, and there must 
have been much to tolerate in that restlessness and jealousy of 
re})utation which is perhaps the inevitable failing of a poet. 
But everything was forgiven to a man who was the acknowl- 
edged boast of his age and country. Clement VI. conferred 
one or two sinecure benefices upon Petrarch, and would prob- 
ably have raised him to a bishopric if he had chosen to adopt 
the ecclesiastical profession. But he never took orders, the 
clerical tonsure being a sufficient qualification for holding can- 
onries. The same pope even afforded him the post of apostol- 
ical secretary, and tliis was repeated by Innocent VL I know 
not whether we should ascribe to magnanimity or to a politic 



662 PETRARCH. Chap. IX. Part II. 

motive the behavior of Clement VI. towards Petrarch, Avho 
had pursued a course as vexatious as possil)le to the PIul}- ISee; 
for not only he made the residence of the supreme poutitt's at 
Avignon, and the vices of their court, the topic of invectives, 
too well founded to be despised, but he had ostentatiously put 
himself forward as the supporter of Nicola di Rienzi in a pro- 
ject which could evidently have no other aim than to wrest 
the city of Rome from the temporal sovereignty of its bishop. 
Nor was the friendship and society of Petrarch less courted 
by the most respectable Italian princes ; by Robert, king of 
Naples, by the Visconti, the Correggiof Parma, the famous doge 
.of Venice, Andrew Dandolo, and the Carrara family of Padua, 
under whose protection he spent the latter years Of his life. 
Stories are related of the respect shown to him by men in 
humbler stations which are perhaps still more satisfactory. 
But the most conspicuous testimony of public esteem was 
bestowed by the city of Rome, in his solemn coronation as 
laureate poet in the Capitol. This ceremony took place in 
1341 ; and it is remarkable that Petrarch had at that time 
composed no works which could, in our estimation, give him 
pretensions to so singular an honor. 

The moral character of Petrarch was formed of dispositions 
peculiarly calculated for a poet. An enthusiast in the emo- 
tions of love and friendship, of glory, of patriotism, of religion, 
he gave the rein to all their impulses ; and there is not, per- 
haps, a page in his Italian Avriting Avhich does not bear the 
trace of one or other of these affections. By far the most pre- 
dominant, and that which has given the greatest celebrity to 
his name, is his passion for Laura. Twenty years of unre- 
quited and almost unaspiring love were lightened by song ; and 
the attachment, which, having long survived the beauty of its 
object, seems to have at one time nearly passed from the heart 
to the fancy, was changed to an intenser feeling, and to a sort 
of celestial adoration, by her death. Laura, before the time 
of Petrarch's tirst accidental meeting with her, was united in 
marriage with another; a fact which, besides some more par- 
ticular evidence, appears to me deducible from the whole tenor 
of his poetry.^*' Such a passion is undoubtedly not capable of 
amoral defence ; nor would I seek its palliation so much in the 
prevalent manners of his age, by which, however, the conduct 
of even good men is generally not a little influenced, as in the 
infirmity of Petrarch's character, which induced him both to 

sr. See NoTic II., " I'etrarcirs Laiir.a." 



State of Society. ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 663 

obey and to justify tlie emotions of his heart. The lady, too, 
whose virtue and }>rudence we are not to question, seeius to 
have tempered the liglit and shadow of her countenance, so 
as to preserve her admirer from despair, and consequently to 
prolong his sufferings and servitude. 

The general excellences of Petrarch are his command over 
the music of his native language, his correctness of style, 
scarcely two or three words that he has used having been 
rejected by later writers, his exquisite elegance of diction, 
improved l3y the perpetual study of Virgil ; but, far above 
all, that tone of pure and melancholy sentiment, which has 
something in it unearthly, and forms a strong contrast to the 
amatory poems of antiquity. Most of these are either licen- 
tious or uninteresting ; and those of Catullus, a man endowed 
by nature with deep and serious sensibility, and a poet, in 
my opinion, of greater and more varied genius than Petrarch, 
are contaminated above all the rest with the most degrading 
grossuess. Of this there is not a single instance in the poet 
of Vaucluse ; and his strains, diffused and admired as they 
have been, may have conferred a benefit that criticism cannot 
estimate in giving elevation and refinement to the imagina- 
tions of youth. The great defect of Petrarch was his want of 
strong original conception, which prevented him from throwing 
off the affected and overstrained manner of the Provencal 
troubadours, and of the earlier Italian poets. 

§ 31. None of the principal modern languages was so late in 
its formation, or in its application to the purposes of literature, 
as the English. This arose, as is well known, out of the Saxon 
branch of the great Teutonic stock spoken in England till after 
the Conquest. From this mother dialect our English differs 
much less in respect of etymology than of syntax, idiom, and 
flexion. In so gradual a transition as probably took place, and 
one so sparingly marked by any existing evidence, we cannot 
well assign a definite origin to our present language. The 
question of identity is almost as perplexing in languages as in 
individuals. Put in the reign of John, a version of Wace's 
poeni of Brut, by one Layamon,^^ a priest of Ernly-upon-Severn, 

2' The entire work of Layamon contains a small nuni)ier of words taken from the 
Frencli; about fifty in tlie original text, and about forty more in that of a manuscript 
perliaps half a century later, and very considerably altered in conseriuence of the 
progress of our language. Jfaiiy of these words derived from the l<'rench express 
new ideas, as adjiiiral, astronoinv, baron, mantel, etc. "The language of I>nyamon," 
says Sir Frederick Madden, " belongs to that transition period in which the ground- 
work of Anglo-Saxon pliniseology and grammar still existed, although gra<iually 
yielding to the influence of the popular forms of speech. We find in it, as in the later 
portion of the Saxon Chronicle, marked indications of a tendency to adopt those ter- 
minations and sounds which characterize a language in a state of change, and which 



664 SLOW PROCESS OF Chap. IX. Part II. 

exhibits, as it were, the chrysalis of the English language, in 
a very corrupt moditieation of the Anglo-Saxon. Very soon 
afterwards the new formation was better developed; and some 
metrical pieces, referred by critics to the earlier part of the 
thirteenth century, differ but little from our legitimate gram- 
mai". About the beginning of Edward I.'s reign, Robert, a 
monk of Gloucester, composed a metrical chronicle from the 
history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which he continued to his 
own time. This work, with a similar chronicle of Robert Man- 
ning, a monk of Brunne (Bourne), in Lincolnshire, nearly thirty 
years later, stands at the head of our English poetry. The 
romance of Sir Tristrem, ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune, 
*surnamed the Rhymer, a Scottish minstrel, has laid claim to 
somewhat higher antiquity. In the fourteenth century a great 
number of metrical romances were translated from the French. 
It requires no small portion of indulgence to speak favorably 
of any of tliese early English i)roductions. A poetical line 
may no doubt occasionally be found ; but in general the nar- 
ration is as heavy and prolix as the versification is unmusical. 
Tlie first English writer who can be read with approbation is 
William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman's A^ision, a 
severe satire upon the clergy. Though his measure is more 
Tincouth than that of his predecessors, there is real energy in 
his conceptions, which he caught, not from the chimeras of 
knight-errantry, but the actual manners and opinions of his 
time. 

The very slow progress of the English language as an in- 
strument of literature is chiefly to be ascribed to the effects 
of the Norman conquest, in degrading the native inhabitants 
and transferring all power and riches to foreigners. The 
barons, without, perhaps, one exception, and a large propor- 
tion of the gentry, were of French descent, and preserved 
among themselves the speech of their fathers. This con- 
tinued much longer than we should naturally have expected ; 
even after the loss of Normandy had snapped the thread of 

are apparent also in some other branches of the Teutonic tongue. Tlie use of a as an 
article — the olianfie of the Anglo-Saxon terminations a and an into e and en, as well as 
the disregard of inflections and genders — the masculine forms given to neuter nouns 
in the plural — the neglect of the frniinine terndnations of adjectives and pro- 
nouns, and confusion between the definite and indelinite declensions — tlie introduc- 
tion of the preposition to before infinitives, and occasional use of weak preterits of 
verbs and participles instead of strong— the constant ncnrrence of er for or in the 
plurals of verbs — together with the uncertainty of the rule for the government of 
Jirepositions —all these variations, more or less Visiltle in the two texts of Layamon, 
cond>ined with the vowel-changes, which are numcnius, though not altogether arbi- 
trary, will show at once the progress made in two centuries in departing from the 
ancient and purer grammatical forms, as found in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts." — 
Pre/ace, p. xxviii. 



State of Society. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 665 

French connections, and they began to pride themselves in 
the name of Englislimen, and in the inheritance of tradition- 
ary English privileges. Robert of Gloncester has a remark- 
able passage, which proves that in his time, somewhere about 
1290, the superior ranks continued to use the French lan- 
guage. Ralpli Higden, about tlie early part of Edward III.'s 
reign, though his expressions do not go the same length, as- 
serts that " gentlemen's children are taught to speak French 
from the time they are rocked in their cradle ; and uplandish 
(country) or inferior men will liken themselves to gentlemen, 
and learn with great business for to speak French, for to be 
the more told of," Notwithstanding, however, this predom- 
inance of French among the higher class, I do not think that 
some modern critics are warranted in concluding that they 
were in general ignorant of the Englisli tongue. Men living 
upon their estates among thi'ir tenantry, wliom they welcomed 
in their halls, and whose assistance they were perpetually 
needing in war and civil frays, would liardly have permitted 
such a barrier to obstruct their intercourse. For we cannot, at 
the utmost, presume that French was so well known to tlie 
English commonalty in the thirteenth century as English is at 
present to the same class in Wales and the Scottish Highlands. 
It may be remarked, also, that the institution of trial by jury 
must have rendered a knowledge of English almost indispensa- 
ble to those who administered justice. There is a proclama- 
tion of Edward I., in Rymer, where he endeavors to excite his 
subjects against the King of France by imiuiting to him the 
intention of conquering the country and abolishing the English 
language (linguam delere Anglicanam), and this is frequently 
repeated in the proclamations of Edward III. In his time, or 
perhaps a little before, the native language liad become more 
familiar than French in common use, even with the court and 
nobility. Hence the numerous translations of metrical ro- 
mances, which are chietly referred to his reign. An important 
change Avas effected in 1362 by a statute, which enacts that all 
pleas in courts of justice shall be pleaded, debated, and judged 
in English. But Latin Avas by this act to be employed in \ 
drawing the record ; for there seems to have still continued a 
sort of prejudice against the use of English as a written lan- 
guage. The earliest English instrument known to exist is said 
to bear the date of 1343. And there are but few entries in 
our own tongue upon the rolls of Parliament before the reign of 
Henry VI., after whose accession its use becomes very common.^* 

'8 See Note III., " The Legislative Use of the English Language." 



G66 CHAUCER. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

Sir John Mandeville, about 1356, may pass for tlie father 
of English prose, no original work being so ancient as his 
Travels. But the translation of tlie Bible and other writ- 
ings by \Meliff, nearly thirty years afterwards, taught us the 
copiousness and energy of which our native dialect was capa- 
ble ; and it was employed in the fifteenth century by two 
writers of distinguished merit, Bishop Becock and Sir John 
Fortescue. 

§ 32. But the principal ornament of our English literature 
was Geoffrey Cliaucer, who, with Dante and Betrarch, tills up 
the triumvirate of great poets in the Middle Ages. Chaucer 
was born in 1328, and his life extended to the last year of the 
fourteenth century. That rude and ignorant generation was 
not likely to feel the admiration of native genius as warmly 
as the compatriots of l*etrarch ; but he enjoyed the favor 
of Edward III., and still more conspicuously of John, duke of 
Lancaster ; his fortunes were far more prosperous than have 
usually been the lot of poets ; and a reputation was established 
beyond competition in his lifetime, from wliich no succeeding 
generation has withheld its sanction. I cannot in my own 
taste go completely along with the eulogies that some have 
bestowed upon Chaucer, who seems to me to have wanted 
grandeur, where he is original, both in conception and in lan- 
guage. But in vivacity of imagination and ease of expression 
he is above all poets of the middle time, and comparable per- 
haps to the greatest of those who have followed. He invented, 
or rather introduced from France, and employed with facility 
the regular iambic couplet ; and though it was not to be ex- 
pected that he should ])orceive the capacities latent in that 
measure, his versification, to which he accommodated a very 
licentious and arbitrary pronunciation, is uniform and harmo- 
nious. It is chiefly, indeed, as a comic poet, and a minute ob- 
server of manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In 
serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse ; 
but he springs like Antaeus from the earth when his subject 
changes to coarse satire or merry narrative. Among his more 
' elevated compositions, the Knight's Tale is al)undantly suffi- 
cient to immortalize Chaucer, since it would be difficult to find 
anywhere a story better conducted, or told with more anima- 
tion and strength of fancy. The second place may be given 
to his Troilus and Creseide, a beautiful and interesting poem, 
though enfeebled by expansion. But perliaps the most emi- 
nent, or at any rate the most characteristic, testimony to his 
genius will be found in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales ; 



State of Society. IIEVIVAL OF ANCIENT LEARNING. G67 

a work entirely and exclusively liis own, Avhicli can seldom 
be said of liis poetry, and the vivid delineations of which per- 
haps very few writers but Shakspeare could have equalled. 
As the first original English poet, if we except Langland, as 
the inventor of our most approved measure, as an improver, 
though with too much innovation, of our language, and as a 
faithful witness to the manners of his age, Chaucer would 
deserve our reverence, if he had not also intrinsic claims for 
excellences which do not depend upon any collateral consid- 
erations. 

§33. (IV.) Revival of Ancient Learning. — The last 
circumstance which I shall mention, as having contributed to 
restore society from the intellectual degradation into which it 
had fallen during the Dark Ages, is the revival of classical 
learning. The Latin language, indeed, in which all legal in- 
struments were drawn up, and of which all ecclesiastics availed 
themselves in their e])istolary intercourse, as well as in their 
more solemn proceedings, had never ceased to be familiar. 
Though many solecisms and barbarous words occur in the 
writings of what were called learned men, they possessed a 
fluency of expression in Latin which does not often occur at 
present. During the Dark Ages, however, properly so called, 
or the period from the sixth to the eleventh century, we chiefly 
meet with quotations from the Vulgate or from theological 
writers. Nevertheless, quotations from the Latin poets are 
hardly to be called unusual. Virgil, Ovid, Statins, and Horace 
are brougiit forward by those who aspired to some literary 
reputation, especially during the better periods of tliat long 
twilight, the reigns of Charlemagne and his son in France, 
part of the tentli century in Germany, and the eleventh in 
both. The prose writers of Rome are not so familiar, but in 
quotations we are apt to find the poets preferred; and it is 
certain that a few could be named who were not ignorant of 
Cicero, Sallust, and Livy. A considerable change took place 
in the course of the twelfth century. The polite literature, as 
well as the abstruser science of anti(|uity, became the subject 
of cultivation. Several writers of that age, in different parts 
of Europe, are distinguished more or less for elegance, though 
not absolute purity, of Latin style, and for their acquaintance 
with those ancients who are its principal models. Such were 
John of Salisbury, the acute and learned author of the Poly- 
craticon, William of Malmsbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Roger 
Hoveden, in England ; and in foreign countries, Otho of Fri- 
singen, Saxo Grammaticus, and the best perhaps of all I have 



668 LIBRARIES. Chap. IX. Part IL 

named as to style, Falcandus, tlie historian of Sicily. In these 
we meet with frequent quotations from Livy, Cicero, Pliny, 
and other considerable writers of antiquity. The poets were 
now admired and even imitated. All metrical Latin before 
the latter part of the twelfth century, so far as I have seen, 
is of little value ; but at this time, and early in the succeeding 
age, there appeared several versifiers' who aspired to the renown 
of following the steps of Virgil and Statins in epic poetry. 
Joseph Iscanus, an Englishman, seems to have been the earli- 
est of these ; his poem on the Trojan war containing an address 
to Henry II. He wrote another, entitled Antiocheis, on the 
third crusade, most of wliich has perished. The wars of Fred- 
erick Barbarossa were celebrated by Gunther in his Ligurinus ; 
and not long afterwards Guillelmus Brito wrote the Philippis, 
in honor of l*hilip Augustus, and Walter de Chatillon the 
Alexandreis, taken from the popular romance of Alexander. 
None of these poems, I believe, have much intrinsic merit ; 
but their existence is a proof of taste that could relish, though 
not of genius that could emulate, antiquity. 

In the thirteenth century there seems to have been some 
decline of classical literature, in consequence probably of the 
scholastic philosophy, which was then in its greatest vigor ; 
at least we do not find so many good writers as in the preced- 
ing age. But about the middle of the fourteenth, or perhajjs 
a little sooner, an ardent zeal for the restoration of ancient 
learning began to display itself. The copying of books, for 
some ages slowly and sjoaringly performed in monasteries, 
had already become a branch of trade ; and their price was 
consequently reduced. Tiraboschi denies that the invention 
of making paper from linen rags is older than the middle of 
that century ; and although doubts may be justly entertained 
as to the accuracy of this position, yet the confidence with 
which so eminent a scholar advances it is at least a proof that 
])aper manuscripts of an earlier date are very rare. Princes 
became far more attentive to literature when it was no longer 
confined to metaphysical theology and canon law. I have 
already mentioned the translations from classical authors, 
made by command of John and Charles V. of France. These 
French translations diffused some acquaintance with ancient 
history and learning among our own countrymen. The public 
libraries assumed a more respectable appearance. Louis IX. 
had formed one at Paris, in which it does not appear that any 
work of elegant literature was found. At tlie beginning of 
the fourteenth century, only four classical manuscripts existed 



State of Society. MANUSCEI1*TS. 669 

in this collection — of Cicero, (3vicl, Lucan, and Boetliius. The 
academical library of Oxford, in 1300, consisted of a few tracts 
kept in chests under St. Mary's Church. That of Glastonbury 
Abbey, in 1240, contained four hundred volumes, among which 
were Livy, Sallust, Lucan, Virgil, Claudian, and other ancient 
Avriters. But no other, probably, of that age was so numerous 
or so valuable, liichard of Bury, chancellor of England, and 
Edward III., spared no expense in collecting a library, the first, 
perhaps, that any [u-ivate man had formed; but the scarcity 
of valuable books was still so great that he gave the Abbot 
of St. Albans fifty pounds' weight of silver for between thirty 
and forty volumes. Charles V. increased the royal library at 
Paris to nine hundred volumes, which the Duke of Bedford 
purchased and transported to London. His brother Humphrey, 
duke of Gloucester, presented the University of Oxford with 
six hundred books, which seem to have been of extraordinary 
value, one hundred and twenty of them having been estimated 
at one thousand pounds. This, indeed, was in 1440, at which 
time such a library would not have been thought remarkably 
numerous beyond the Alps ; but England had made compara- 
tively little progress in learning. Germany, however, was 
probably still less advanced. Louis, elector palatine, be- 
queathed, in 1421, his library to the University of Heidelberg, 
consisting of one hundred and fifty-two volumes. Eighty-nine 
of these related to theology, twelve to canon and civil law, 
forty-five to medicine, and six to philosophy. 

Those who first undertook to lay open the stores of ancient 
learning found incredible difficulties from the scarcity of 
manuscripts. So gross and supine was the ignorance of the 
monks within whose walls these treasures were concealed, that 
it was impossible to ascertain, except by indefatigable re- 
searches, the extent of what had been saved out of the great 
shipwreck of antiquity. To this inquiry Petrarch devoted 
continual attention. He spared no means to preserve the 
remains of authors who were perisliing from neglect and time. 
This danger was by no means past in the fourteenth century. 
A treatise of Cicero upon Glory, which had been in his pos- 
session, was afterwards irretrievably lost. He declares that 
he had seen in his youth the works of Varro ; but all his 
endeavors to recover these, and the second Decade of Livy, 
were fruitless. He found, however, Quintilian, in 1350, of 
which there was no copy in Italy. Boccaccio, and a man of 
less general fame, Colluccio Salutato, were distinguished in the 
same honorable task. The diligence of these scholars was 



670 MANUSCRIPTS. Cuap. IX. Part II. 

not confined to searching for manuscripts. Transcribed by 
slovenly monks, or by ignorant persons who made copies for 
sale, they required the continual emendation of accurate critics. 
Though much, certainly, was left for the more enlightened 
sagacity of later times, we owe the first intelligible text of the 
Latin classics to Petrarch, Poggio, and their contemporary 
laborers in this vineyard for a hundred years before the inven- 
tion of printing. 

What Petrarch began in the fourteenth century was carried 
on by the new generation with unabating industry. The whole 
lives of Italian scholars in the fifteenth century were devoted 
to the recovery of manuscripts and the revival of philology. 
For this they sacrificed their native language, which had made 
such surprising shoots in the preceding age, and were content 
to trace in humble reverence the footsteps of antiquity. For 
this, too, they lost the hope of permanent glory, which can 
never remain with imitators, or such as trim the lamp of 
ancient sepulchres. No writer, perhaps, of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, excei)t Politian, can aspire at present even to the second 
class in a just marshalling of literary re])utation. Put Ave owe 
them our respect and gratitude for their taste and diligence. 
The discovery of an unknown manuscript, says Tiraboschi, 
was regarded almost as the conquest of a kingdom. The classi- 
cal writers, he adds, were chiefly either fcund in Italy, or at 
least by Italians ; they were first amended and first printed in 
Italy, and in Italy they were first collected in public libraries. 
This is subject to some exception, when fairly considered ; 
several ancient authors were never lost, and therefore cannot 
be said to have been discovered ; and we know that Italy did 
not always anticipate other countries in classical printing. 
But her superior merit is incontestable. Poggio Bracciolini, 
who stands, perhaps, at the head of the restorers of learning 
in the earlier part of the fifteenth century, discovered in the 
monastery of St. Gall, among dirt and rubbish, in a dungeon 
scarcely fit for condemned criminals, as he describes it, an 
entire copy of Quintilian and part of Valeiius Flaccus. This 
was in 1414; and soon afterwai'ds he rescued the poem of 
Silius Italicus, and twelve comedies of Plautus, in addition to 
eight that were previously known ; besides Lucretius, Co- 
lumella, TertuUian, Ammianus Marcellinus, and other writers 
of inferior note. A bishop of Lodi brought to light the rhe- 
torical treatises of Cicero. Not that we must suppose these 
books to have been universally unknown before; Quintilian. at 
least, is quoted by English writers much earlier. But so little 



State of Societv. GEEEK LANGUAGE. 671 

intercourse prevailed among different countries, and tlie monks 
liad so little acquaintance vith the riches of their conventual 
libraries, that an autlior might pass for lost in Italy who was 
familiar to a few learned men in other parts of Europe. To 
the name of Foggio we may add a number of others, distin- 
guished in this memorable resurrection of ancient literature, 
and united, not always, indeed, by friendship, for their bitter 
animosities disgrace their profession, but by a sort of common 
sympathy in the cause of learning : Filelfo, Laurentius Valla, 
Niccolo Xicoli, Ambrogio Traversari, more commonly called 
II Camaldolense, and Leonardo Aretiuo. 

§ 34. From the subversion of the Western Empire, or at 
least from the time when Rome ceased to pay obedience to the 
exarchs of Ravenna, the Greek language and literature had 
been almost entirely forgotten within the pale of the Latin 
Church. A very few exceptions might be found, especially 
in the earlier period of the Middle Ages, while the Eastern 
emperors retained their dominion over part of Italy. Thus 
Charlemagne is said to have established a school for Greek at 
Osnaburg. John Scotus seems to have been well acquainted 
with the language. And Greek characters may occasionally, 
though very seldom, be found in the writings of learned men ; 
such as Lanfranc, or William of Malmsbury. It is said that 
Roger Bacon understood Greek; and that his eminent con- 
temporary, Robert Grostete, bishop of Lincoln, had a suffi- 
cient intimacy with it to translate a part of Suidas. Since 
Greek was spoken with considerable purity by the noble and 
well-educated natives of Constantinople, we may wonder that, 
even as a living language, it was not better known by the 
Western nations, and especially in so neighboring a nation as 
Italy. Yet here the ignorance was, perhaps, even more com- 
plete than in France or England. In some parts, indeed, of 
Calabria, which had been subject to the Eastern Empire till 
near the year 1100, the liturgy was still performed in Greek; 
and a considerable acquaintance with the language was of 
course preserved. But for the scholars of Italy, Boccaccio 
positively assorts that no one understood so much as the 
Greek characters. Nor is there, probably, a single line quoted 
front any poet in that language from the sixth to the four- 
teenth century. 

The first to lead the way in restoring Grecian learning in 
Europe were the samo men who had revived the kindred 
muses of Latium, Petrarch, and Foccaccio. Barlaam, a Cala- 
brian by birth, during an embassy from the Court of Con- 



672 LEARNING AMONG THE GREEKS. Chap. IX. Pakt II. 

stantinople in 1335, was persuaded to become the preceptor of 
the former, with whom he read tlie works of Plato. Leontius 
Pilatus, a native of Thessalonica, was encouraged some years 
afterwards by Boccaccio to give public lectures upon Homer 
at Florence. Whatever might be the share of general atten- 
tion that he excited, he had the honor of instructing both 
these great Italians in his native language. Neither of them, 
perhaps, reached an advanced degree of proficiency ; but they 
bathed their lips in the fountain, and enjoyed the pride of 
being the first who paid the homage of a new posterity to the 
father of poetry. For some time little fruit. api)arently, resulted 
from their example ; but Italy had imbibed the desire of acqui- 
sitions in a new sphere of knowledge, which, after some in- 
terval, she was abundantly able to realize. A few years before 
the termination of the fourteenth century, Emanuel Chryso- 
loras, whom the Emperor John Pala^ologus had previously 
sent into Italy, and even as far as England, upon one of those 
unavailing embassies by which the Byzantine Court strove to 
obtain sympathy and succor from Europe, returned to Florence 
as a public teacher of Grecian literature. His school was 
afterwards removed successively to Pavia, Venice, and Rome ; 
and during nearly twenty years that he taught in Italy most 
of those eminent scholars whom I have already named, and 
who distinguish the first half of that centur}', derived from his 
instruction their knowledge of the Greek tongue. Some, not 
content with being the disciples of Chrysoloras, betook them- 
selves to the source of that literature at Constantinople ; and 
returned to Italy not only with a more accurate insight into 
the Greek idiom than they could liave attained at home, but 
with copious treasures of manuscripts, few, if any, of which 
probably existed previously in Italy, where none had ability 
to read or value them ; so that the principal authors of Grecian 
antiquity may be considered as brought to light by these in- 
quirers, the most celebrated of whom are (iuarino of Verona, 
Aurispa, and Filelto. Tiie second of these brought home to 
Venice, in 1423, not less than two hundred and thirty-eight 
volumes. 

The fall of that Eastern Emjnre, which had so long out- 
lived all other pretensions to respect that it scarcely retained 
that founded upon its antiquity, Seems to have been provi- 
dentially delayed till Italy was ripe to nourish the scattered 
seeds of literature that woidd have perished a few ages ear- 
lier in the common catastroplie. From the commencement of 
the fifteenth century even the national pride of Greece could 



State OF Society. LEARNING AMONG THE GREEKS. 673 

not blind her to the signs of approaching ruin. It was no 
longer possible to inspire the European republic, distracted 
by wars and restrained by calculating policy, with the gener- 
ous fanaticism of the Crusades ; and at tlie Council of Flor- 
ence, in 143'.), the court and church of Constantinople had 
the mortification of sacrificing their long-cherished faith, 
without experiencing ^ any sensible return of protection or 
security. The learned Greeks were perhaps the first to anti- 
cipate, and certainly not the last to avoid, their country's 
destruction. The Council of Florence brought many of them 
into Italian connections, and held out at least a temi)orary 
accommodation of their confiicting opinions. Though the Ko- 
nian pontiffs did nothing, and probably could have done notli- 
ing effectual for the empire of Constantinople, they were very 
ready to protect and reward the learning of individuals. To 
Eugenius IV., to jSTicolas V., to Pius II., and some other popes 
of this age, the Greek exiles were indebted for a patronage 
which they repaid by splendid services in the restoration of 
their native literature throughout Italy. Bessarion, a dispu- 
tant on the Greek side in the Council of Florence, was well 
content to renounce the doctrine of single procession for a 
cardinal's hat — a dignity wliich he deserved for his learning, 
if not for his pliancy. Theodore Gaza, George of Trel)izon(l, 
and Gemistus Pletho might equal Bessarion in merit, though 
not in honors. They all, however, experienced tlie ])atronage 
of those admirable protectors of letters, Nicolas V., Cosmo de' 
Medici, or Alfonso king of Naples. These men emigrated 
before the final destruction of the Greek Empire ; Lascaris 
Musurus, whose arrival in Italy was posterior to that event, 
may be deemed perhaps still more conspicuous ; but as the 
study of the Greek language was already restored, it is unne- 
cessary to pursue the subject any farther. 

The Greeks had preserved, through the course of the Middle 
Ages, their share of ancient learning with more fidelity and 
attention than was shown in the west of Europe. Genius, 
indeed, or any original excellence, could not well exist along 
with their cowardly despotism and their contemptible theology, 
more corrupted by frivolous subtleties than that of the Latin 
Church. The spirit of persecution, naturally allied to des]K)t- 
ism and bigotry, had nearly, during one period, extinguished 
the lamp, or at least reduced the Greeks to a level with the 
most ignorant nations of the West. In the age of Justinian, 
who expelled the last Platonic philosoidiers, learning began 
rapidly to decline; in that of Heraclius it had reached a much 



674 CLASSIC LITERATURE. Chap. IX. Part XL 

lower point of degradation ; and for two centuries, especially 
while the worshippers of images were persecuted with unre- 
lenting intolerance, there is almost a blank in the annals of 
Grecian literature. But about the middle of the ninth century 
it revived pretty suddenly, and with considerable success. 
Though, as 1 have observed, we find in very few instances any 
original talent, yet it was hardly less important to have had 
compilers of such erudition as Photius, Suidas, Eustathius, 
and Tzetzes. With these, certainly, the Latins of the Middle 
Ages could not place any names in comparison. They possessed, 
to an extent which we cannot precisely appreciate, many of 
those poets, historians, and orators of ancient Greece, whose loss 
we have long regretted and must continue to deem irretrievable. 
Great havoc, however, was made in the libraries of Constanti- 
nople at its capture by the Latins — an epoch from which a 
rapid decline is to be traced in the literature of the Eastern 
Empire. Solecisms and barbarous terms, which sometimes 
occur in the old Byzantine Avriters, are said to deform the style 
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Turkish ravages 
and destruction of monasteries ensued ; and in the cheerless 
intervals of immediate terror there was no longer any encour- 
agement to preserve the monuments of an expiring language, 
and of a name that was to lose its place among nations. 

That ardor for the restoration of classical literature which 
animated Italy in the first part of the fifteenth century was 
by no means common to the rest of Europe. Neither England, 
nor France, nor Germany, seemed aware of the approaching 
change. We are told that learning, by which I believe is 
only meant the scholastic ontology, had begun to decline at 
Oxford from the time of Edward IIL ; and the fifteenth cen- 
tury, from whatever cause, is particularly barren of writers 
in the Latin language. The study of Greek was only intro- 
duced by Grocyn and Linacer under Henry VIL, and met 
with violent opposition in the University of Oxford, where 
the unlearned ])arty styled themselves Trojans, as a pretext 
for abusing and insulting the scholars. Nor did any clas- 
sical work proceed from the respectable press of Caxton. 
France, at the beginning of the fifteenth age, had several 
eminent theologians ; but the reigns of Charles VII. and Louis 
XI. contributed far more to her political than her literary 
renown. A Greek professor was first appointed at Paris in 
1458, before which time the language had not been indilicly 
taught, and was little understood. Much less had Germany 
tlirown otf her ancient rudeness. iEneas Sylvius, indeed, a 



Static of Societv. INVEXTIOX OF PRINTING. 675 

deliberate flatterer, extols every circumstance in the social 
state of that country ; but Campano, the papal legate at 
Ratisbon in 1471, exclaims against the barbarism of a nation 
where very few possessed any learning, none any elegance. 
Yet the progress of intellectual cultivation, at least in the 
two former countries, was uniform, though silent ; libraries 
became more numerous, and books, after the happy invention 
of paper, though still very scarce, might be copied at less 
expense. Many colleges were founded in the English as well 
as foreign universities during the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries. Nor can I pass over institutions that have so emi- 
nently contributed to the literary reiaitation of this country, 
and that still continue to exercise- so conspicuous an influence 
over her taste and knowledge, as the two great schools of gram- 
matical learning, Winchester and Eton — the one founded by 
William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1373 ; the other 
in 1432, by King Henry VI. 

§ 35. But while the learned of Italy were eagerly ex])lor- 
ing their recent acquisitions of manuscripts, deciphered with 
difliculty and slowly circulated from hand to hand, a few 
obscure Germans had gradually perfected the most important 
discovery recorded in the annals of mankind. The invention 
of printing, so far from being the result of })hilosophical saga- 
city, does not appear to have been suggested by any regard to 
the higher branches of literature, or to bear any other relation 
than that of coincidence to their revival in Italy. The ques- 
tion why it was struck out at tliat particular time must be 
referred to that disposition of unknown causes which we 
call accident. Two or three centuries earlier, we cannot but 
acknowledge, the discovery Avould have been almost equally 
acceptable. lUit the invention of paper seems to have natu- 
rally preceded those of engraving and printing. It is gener- 
ally agreed that playing-cards, which have been traced far 
back in the fourteenth century, gave the flrst notion of taking 
off impressions from engraved flgures upon wood. The second 
stage, or rather second application of this art, was the repre- 
sentation of saints and otlier religious devices, several instances 
of which are still extant. Some of these are accompanied with 
an entire page of illustrative text, cut into the same wooden 
block. This process is indeed far removed from the invention 
that has given immortality to the names of Faust, Schreffer, 
and Gutenberg, yet it probal)ly led to the consideration of 
means wliertdiy it might be rendered less operose and incon- 
venient. Whether movable wooden characters were ever em- 



676 REVIVAL OF LEARNING. Chap. IX. Tart II. 

ployed in any entire work, is very questionable — the opinion 
that referred their use to Laurence Coster, of Haarlem, not 
having stood the test of more accurate investigation. They 
appear, however, in the capital letters of some early printed 
books. But no expedient of tliis kind could have fulfilled the 
great purposes of this invention until it was perfected by 
founding metal types in a matrix or mould, the essential 
characteristic of printing, as distinguished from other arts that 
bear some analogy to it. 

The first book that issued from the presses of Faust and his 
associates at Mentz was an edition of tlie Vulgate, commonly 
called the Mazarine Bible, a copy having been discovered in 
the library that owes its name to Cardinal Mazarin at Paris. 
This is supposed to have been printed between the years 1450 
and 1455. In 1457 an edition of the Psalter appeared, and in 
this the invention was announced to the world in a boasting 
colophon, though certainly not unreasonably bold. Another 
edition of the Psalter, one of an ecclesiastical book, Durand's 
account of liturgical offices, one of the Constitutions of Pope 
Clement V., and one of a popvdar treatise on general science, 
called the Catholicon, filled up the interval till 1462, when the 
second Mentz Bible proceeded from the same printers. This, 
in the opinion of some, is the earliest book in whicli cast types 
were employed — those of the Mazarine Bible having been cut 
with the hand. But this is a controverted point. In 3465 
Faust and Schoeffer published an edition of Cicero's Offices, the 
first tribute of the new art to polite literature. Two pupils of 
their school, Sweynheim and I'annartz, migrated the same year 
into Italy, and i)rinted Donatus's grammar and the works of 
Lactautius at the monastery of Subiaco, in the neighborhood 
of Rome. Venice had the honor of extending lier j)atronage to 
John of Spira, the first who applied the art on an extensive 
scale to the publication of classical writers. Several authoi-s 
came forth from his press in 1470 ; and during the next ten 
years a multitude of editions were published in various parts 
of Italy. Thoi;gh, as we may judge from their present scarcity, 
these editions were by no means numerous in respect of im- 
pressions, yet, contrasted with the dilatory process .of copying 
manuscripts, they were like a new mechanical power in 
machinery, and gave a wonderfully accelerated impulse to 
the intellectual cultivation of mankind. From the era of these 
first editions proceeding from the kSpiras, Zarot, Janson, or 
Sweynheim and Pannartz, literature must be deemed to have 
altogether revived in Italy. The sun was now fully above the 



State OF Society. REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 677 

horizon, though countries less fortunately circumstanced did 

not immediately catch his beams ; and the restoration of 
ancient learning in France and England cannot be considered 
as by any means effectual even at tlie expiration of the 
fifteenth century. At this point, however, I close the present 
chapter. The last twenty years of the Middle Ages, according 
to the date which I have fixed for their termination in treating 
of political history, might well invite me by their brilliancy to 
dwell upon that golden morning of Italian literature. But, in 
the history of letters, they rather appertain to the modern 
than the middle period ; nor would it become me to trespass 
upon the exhausted patience of my readers by repeating what 
has been so often and so recently told, the story of art and 
learning that has employed the comprehensive research of a 
Tiraboschi, a Ginguene, and a Roscoe. 



678 



NOTES TO CHAPTEK IX. 



NOTES TO CHAPTER IX. — Part IL 



I. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTUKE. 

Tlie best account of domestic architec- 
ture liitlierto given is in an article with 
this title in the Glossary of Ancient Arch- 
itecture by Mr. Twopeuy. " Tliere is am- 
ple evidence yet remaining of the domestic 
arcliitecture in this country during the 
twelfth century. The ordinary manor- 
houses, and even houses of greater con- 
sideration, appear to have been generally 
built in the form of a parallelogram, two 
stories high, the lower story vaulted, with 
no internal communication between I lie 
two, the upper story approached by a flight 
of steps on tlie outside; and in that story 
was sometimes the only fireplace in the 
whole building. It is more than probable 
that this was the usual style of houses 
in the preceding century." Instances of 
houses partly remaining are then given. 
We may add to those mentioned by Mr. 
Twopenyone, perhaps older than any, and 
better preserved tlian some, in his list. At 
Southampton is a Norman house, perhaps 
built in the first part of the twelfth cen- 
tury. It is nearly a square, the outer walls 
tolerably perfect; the princijinl rooms ap- 
pear to have been on the first (or ui)i)er) 
floor; it has in this also a fireplace and 
chimney, and four window^s, i)hiced so as 
to indicate a division into two. iiiiirtments; 
but there are no liglits below, nor any 
appearance of an inteiior staircase. The 
sides are about forty feet in length. An- 
other house of tlie same age is near to if, 
but much worse preserved. There were 
in tlie twelftli century otlier considerable 
houses not liiiilt in the form of a ))arallelo- 
gram, hut of these so few remains are to 
be found that nothing can be said of tlieir 
plan, except that there was on the ground 
floor a considerable hall, which was di- 
vided by columns and arclies into a centre 
and two side isles, an arrangement which 
was continued to a later period. 

The parallelogram house, seldom con- 
taining more tlian four rooms, with tio 
access frequently to the upix'r, wbicli the 
family occupied, except on tlie outside, 
was gradually replaced by one on a diU'er- 
ent type : th(> entrance was on the ground, 
the staircase within; a kitchen and other 
olhces, orininally detached, were usually 
connected with the hall by a passage run- 
ning through the house; one or more 
stpartmeiits on the lower floor exteirded 



beyond the hall ; there was seldom or 
never a third floor over the entire house, 
but detached turrets for sleeping-rooins 
rose at some of the angles. Tliis was tlie 
typical form which lasted, as we know, to 
the age of Elizabeth, or even later. The 
superior houses of this class were some- 
times quadrangular, that is, iiichidiiig a 
court-yard, but seldom, perliai)s,witli more 
than one side allotted to the main dwell- 
ing; ortices, stables, or mere walls filled 
the other three. 

Many dwellings erected in the fourteenth 
century may be found in England; but 
neither of that nor the next age are tlieie 
more than a very few- which are still, in 
their chief rooms, inhabited by gentry. 
But houses which, by their marks of deco- 
ration, or by external jiroof, are ascer- 
tained to have been formerly occiijiied by 
good families, though now in tlii' occu- 
pation of small farmers, and built ap- 
parently from the reign of the second to 
that of the fourth Edward, are common 
in many counties. They generally bear the 
name of court, hall, or ^ange; sometimes 
only the surname of some ancient occu- 
pant; and very frequently have been the 
residence of the lord of the manor. 

The most striking circumstance in the 
oldest houses is not so much their pre- 
cautions for defence in the outside stair- 
case, and, when that was disused, the bet- 
ter safeguard against robbery in the moat 
which frequently environed ihe walls, the 
strong gate-way, the small window broken 
by mullions, which are no more than we 
should expect in the times, as the paucity 
ofapartments.sothat both sexes, and that 
even in high rank, must have occupied the 
same room. The progress of a regard to 
decency in domestic architecture has been 
gradual, and in some respects has been in- 
creasing up to our own age. IJnt the me- 
dia'val period shows little of it; though, 
in the advance of wealth, a greater di- 
vision of apartments distinguishes the 
houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries from those of an earlier period. 

II. PETItARCIl'S LAURA. 

The Ahh(j de Sade, in his memoirs of the 
life of I'etrarch, endeavored to establish 
his own descent from Laura, as the wife of 
Hughes de Sade, and b'orn in the family de 
Noves. This hypothesis has since been 



NO'J'ES TO CHAPTER IX. 



679 



received with genoral aciiuii'scence by lit- 
erary men; and Thiiijosolii in particular, 
wlio.se talent lay in these petty bioj;rapli- 
ical researches, and who had a prejudice 
against everything that came from France, 
seems to consider it as decisively proved. 
But it has been called in question in a 
modern publication by the late Lord Wood- 
houselee (" Kssay on the Life and Charac- 
ter of Petrarch,"" 1810). I shall not otier 
anyopinionsas to the identityof I'etrarch's 
mistress with Laura de .Sade; but the main 
positionof Lord W.'s essay, that Laura was 
an unmarried woman, and the object of an 
honorable attachment in her lover, seems 
irreconcilable witli tlie evidence that his 
writings supply. 1. There is no passage 
in I'etrarch, whether of poetry or prose, 
that alludes to the virgin character of 
Laura, or gives lier the usual appellations 
of unnnirried women — puella in fjatin, or 
donzella in Italian; even in the Trionfo 
della Castitii, where so obvious an oppor- 
tunity occurred. Yet this was naturally 
to be expected from so ethereal an imagi- 
nation as that of I'etrarch, always inclined 
to invest her with the halo of celestial 
purity. 2. The coldness of I^aura towards 
so passionate and deserving a lover, if no 
insui'mountable obstacle intervened dur- 
ing liis twenty years of devotion, would 
be at least a mark that his attachment 
was misplaced, and show him in rather a 
ridiculous light. It is not surprising that 
persons believing Laura to be unmarried, 
as seems to have been the case with 
the Italian commentators, should have 
thought his passion affected, and little 
more than poetical. But, upon the con- 
trary supposition, a thread runs through 
the whole of his poetry, and gives it con- 
sistency. A love on the one side, instan- 
taneously conceived, and retained by the 
susceptibility of a tender heart and ardent 
fancy; nourished by slight encourage- 
ment, and seldom presuming to hope for 
more ; a mixtuie of prudence and co(juetry 
on the other, kept within bounds eitlier 
by virtue or by the want of mutual at- 
tacliment, yet iiot dissatisfied with fame 
more brilliant and flattery more refined 
than had ever before been the lot of 
woman — tliese are surely pretty natural 
circumstances, and such as do not render 
the story less intelligible. Unquestionably 
such a passion is not innocent. But Lord 
Woodhouselee, who is so much scandal- 
ized at it, knew little, one would think, of 
the fourteenth century. His standard is 
taken, not from Avignon, but from Edin- 
burgh, a much better place, no doubt, and 
where the moral barometer stands at a 
very different altitude. In one passage 
(p. 188) he carries his strictness to an 
excess of prudery. From all we know 
of the age of I'etrarch, the only matter of 
astonishment is the persevering virtue 
of Laura. The troubadours boast of much 
better success with I'rovenQal ladies. 3. 
But a passage from Petrarch's dialogues 



with St. Augustin, the work, as is well 
known, where he most unbosoms hims"lf, 
leaves no doubt, 1 think, that his passion 
c<niUl not have been gratified consistently 
with honor (" l)e Contemptu Mundi,'' 
Dialog. 3, p. 307, edit. loSl). 



III. EARLY LKfiLSLATlVE USE OF 
ENGLISH. . 

The progress of our language in pro- 
ceedings of the legislature is described in 
the iireface to tlie authentic e<lition of 
Statutes of the Realm, published by the 
Record Commission : 

" The earliest instance recorded of the 
use of the English language in anv parlia- 
mentary proceeding is in 36 Edward III. 
The style of the roll of that year is in 
French, as usual, Init it is expressly stated 
that the causes of sunnnoning the I'arlia- 
ment were declared e7i Enylois ; and the 
like circumstance is noted in 37 and 38 
Edward III.* In the 5th yearof Richard 
II. the chancellor is stated to have made 
un bone collacion e» Eni/k'ys {introductory , 
as was then sometimes the usage, to the 
commencement of business), though he 
made use of the common French form for 
opening the Parliament. A petition from 
the ' Folk of the j\Iercerye of London,' in 
the 10th year of the same reign, is in En- 
glish; and it appears also that in the 17th 
year the Earl of Arundel asked pardon of 
the Duke of Lancaster by the award of 
the king and Lords, in .their presence in 
I'arliament, in a form of English words. 
The cession and renunciation of the crown 
by Richard II. is stated to have been read 
before the estates of the realm and the 
people in Westminster Hall, first in Latin 
and afterwards in English, but it is entered 
on the Parliament roll only in Latin. And 
the challenge of the crown by Henry IV., 
with liis thanks after the allowance of his 
title, in the same assembly, are recorded 
in English, which is termed his m.aternal 
tongue. So also is the speech of Lonl 
William Thyrning, the chief-justice of the 
Common Pleas, to the late King Richard, 
announcing to him the sentence of his 
deposition, and the yielding up, on the 
part of the people, "of their fealty and 
allegiance. In the 6th year of the reign 
of Henry IV. an English answer is given 
to a petition of the Commons, touching a 
proposed resumption of certain grants of 
the crown, to the intent the king might 
live of his own. The English language 
afterwards appears occasionally, through 
the reigns of Henry IV. and V. In the 
first and second and subsequent years of 
Henry VI. the petitions or bills, and in 
many cases the answers also, on which the 
statutes were afterwards framed, are found 
frequently in English; but the statutes 



680 



NOTES TO CHAPTER IX. 



are entered on the roll in Frcncli or Latin. 
From tlie SM year of Henry VI. these 
p<lition.s or bills are almost universally in 
English, as is also soinetimes the form of 
tlie royal assent; but the statutes con- 
tinued to be enrolled in French or Latin. 
Sometimes Latin and French are used in 
the same statute,* as in 8 Henry VL, 27 
Henry VL, and 39 Henry VI. The last 
statute wholly in Latin on record is 3.3 
Henry VI., c. 2. The statutes of Edward 
IV. are entirely in French. The statutes 
of Richard III. are in many manuscripts 
in French in a complete statute form; and 



' All the acta passed in the enme session are legally or 
ute ; the dilTereuoe of language was in separate cbapte: 



they were so printed in his reign and that 
of his successor. In the earlier English 
editions a translation was inserted in the 
same form; but in several editions, since 
1018, they have been printed in English, 
in a different form, agreeing, so far as 
relates to the acts printed, with the en- 
rolment in chancery at the ('liapel of the 
Ifolls. 'J'he petitions and bills in I'arlla- 
ment, during these two reigns, are all in 
English. Thestatutesof Henry VII. have 
always, it is believed, been published in 
English; but there are manuscripts con- 
taining the statutes of the Krst two l*ar- 
liaments, in his first and third year, in 
French. From the fourth year to'tlie end 
of his reign, and from thence to the pres- 
ent time, they are universally in English." 



INDEX. 



AliBASSIDES. 



ANGLO-SAXONS. 



A. 

Abbassides, encouragement 
of science and art by the, 
i!'J6. Progress of their dy 
nasty, ib. Its decadence, 
297. 

Abduli'ahman proclaimed 
caliiih of Cordova, 2'JC. 

Abohird (I'eter), enthusiasm 
excitedby tlieteacliingsof 
643. His erratic career, t6, 

Acre, consequences to com- 
merce by tlie capture of, 
592. 

Adorni and Fregosi factions, 
disruption of Genoa by tlie, 
198. 

Adolphus of Nassau elected 
Emperor of Germany, 272. 

Adrian IV.(tlieoiilyEnglisli 
pope), insolence of, 
towards Frederick Barba- 
rossa, 338. His system of 
mandats, 348. 

Adventurers(military). (See 
Military .Systems.) 

.tineas Sylvius (afterwards 
Pius II.), abets the war 
agaiust the Turks, 306. He 
obtains the repeal of the 
Pragmatic Sanction, 373. 

Agriculture, causeof the low 
state of, 580, 610. Superior 
cult i V at ion of Church 
lands, 610. Agricultural 
colonies, 611. Early en- 
closures andclearances,;'/). 
Exportation of corn, 612. 
How limited, ib. High 
state of Italian agriculture, 
ib. Ert'ects of pestilence, 
T)!.'!. Excellence of tlie 
Italian gardens, ib. Ne- 
glect of horticulture in 
Eugland, ib. 

Alaric, defeated by Clovis, 2. 
Laws compiled by his or- 
der, 640. 

Albert I. of Germany, 272. 
His rule in Switzerland, 
288, 289. His expulsion 
and assassination, 289. 
The French crown offered 
to him, .358. 

Albert II. succeeds Sigis- 
mund as emperor of Ger- 
many, 276. 



Albigeusian heresy, spread 
of the, 22. Massacre of 
the Albigeois, ib. {See 
Religious Sects.) 

Albizi, ascendency in Flor- 
ence regained by the, 222 
Cosmo de Medici banished 
at their instigation, ib. 
Their overthrow, ib. Ex 
elusion of their family 
from the magistracy, ib. 

Alcuin teaches Charle 
magne, 642. He discour- 
ages secular learning, ib. 

Alexander II. (pope), elec- 
tion of, 331. He deposes 
the English prelates, 401, 
note. 

— III. (pope), supports 
Thomas a Becket, 339. 
Adopts the system of man- 
dats, 348. 

— V. elected pope, 366. 
His successor, ib. 

— II r. king of Scotland, 
opposition to papal domi- 
nation by, 351. 

Alexius Comnenus attacks 
the Turks, 300. He re- 
covers the Greek terri- 
tories, ib. 

Alfonso I. of Aragon be- 
queaths his kingdom to 
the Knights Templars, 
2.33. 

— III. of Aragon, 252. 

— V. of Aragon (the Mag- 
nanimous), 217. Adopted 
by Joanna II. of Niqjles, 
ib. She revokes the adop- 
tion, ib. His accession, 
218. His imprisonment by 
the Genoese, ib. His alli- 
ance with Milan, ib. His 
virtues and patronage of 
literature, 219. His love 
of Naples, 251. 

— VII. of Castile, unwise 
division of his dominions 
by, 233. 

— X. of Castile, scientific 
acquirements and govern- 
mental deficiencies of, 235. 
His election as Emperor 
of Germany, 268. 

— XI. of Ciistile, 236. 
Alfred the Great, rescue of 

the Anglo-Saxon mon- 

681 



archy by, .377. His alleged 
division of the kingdom 
into counties, 382. Ascrip 
tion of trial by jury to him 
385. Extent of his ac 
quaintaiice witliLatin,565 
His declaration of the ig 
norance of the clergy, 566, 

Aliens held liable for each 
other's debts, 597. 

Allodial tenure, characteris 
tics of, 70, and twte. Con 
verted into feudal tenure 
79. 

Almamiin and Almansor 
caliphs of Bagdad, patron 
age of letters by, 295, 296, 

Alvaro de Luna. (See Luna., 

Aiiiadeus (duke of Savoy) 
elected jioije, .369. 

Amalrt, early commercial 
eminence of, 592. Its de- 
cline, ib. Alleged inven- 
tion of the mariner's com- 
pass there, 594. Discovery 
of the Pandects, 640. 

Amurath I., progresses of 
the Turkish arms under, 
304, 

II., rout of the Hunga- 
rians by, 286. Reunion of 
the Ottoman monarchy 
under him, .304. He per- 
fects the institution of the 
Janizaries, 306. 

Anastasius confers the dig- 
nity of consulship on Cle- 
vis, 2. 

Andalusia, conquest of, by 
Ferdinand III., 233. 

Andrew of Hungary mar- 
ried to Joanna of Naples, 
215. His murder imputed 
to Joanna, ib. 

Anglo-Normans. (See Eng- 
■ ind.) 

Anglo-Siixons, divisions of 
England under the, .376. 
Their Danish assailants, 
ib. Alfred and his succes- 
sors, 377. Descent of the 
crown, 378. Influence of 
provincial governors, 379. 
Thanes and ceorls, 380. 
Condition of the ceorls, 
ib. Privileges annexed 
to their possession of land, 
ib. Position of the socage 



682 



ANJOU. 



INDEX. 



BAUONS. 



tfiiants, ib. Condition of 
tlie liritisli ii:itives, 381. 
Constitution of the Wite- 
nageniot, 3s:.', 'I'.tO. Admin- 
istration of justice, and 
divisions of tlie land for 
the purpose, 382. Hun- 
dreds and their probable 
origin, ih., .383. The titli- 
ing-nian and alderman, 
iiiite, 3S4. The County 
Court and its jurisdiction, 
ib. Trial by jury and its 
antecedents, 385, 386. In- 
troduction of the law of 
frank-pledge, ib. Progress 
of the system of frank- 
pledges, ib. Kesponsibiii- 
ties and uses of tlie tith- 
iugs, 3S7. Probable 
e.xistenceof feudal tenures 
before the Conquest, 389- 
31)2. Observations on the 
diaiige of the lieptarchy 
into a monarchy, .393. 
Consolidation of the mon- 
archy, 3'.»4. Condition of 
the eorls and ceorls further 
elucidated, 394-396. .Judi- 
cialfunclionsof the Anglo- 
Sa.\ou kings, 420. Anal- 
ogy between the French 
aiiil Anglo-Saxon mon- 
archies, 421. Peculiar 
jurisdiction of the King's 
Court, ib., 423. 

Anjon (Louis, duke of), liis 
at tempt on the crown of 
Naples.and death, 46. (See 
Charles of Anjou.) 

Aiiselm (archbishop), cause 
of his quarrel witli Wil- 
liam II. and Henry I. ,337. 
Desciirtes's argument on 
the Deity anticipated by 
him, 647. 

Apptuiages, effect of the sys- 
tem of, 56. 

Aquinas (Thoma.s), meta- 
jihysical eminence of, 646. 

Aqiiitaine, extent of the do- 
minions so called, ()i\. 
( haracter of its people, ib. 

Arabia and the Arabs. (See 
Mohaniiiicd.) 

Aragon, bequest of, to the 
Teni{)lars by Alfonso I. 
and reversal thereof, 233 
Kise of the kingdom in 
political importance, 248, 
Struggle for the succes- 
sion to its crown, 249, 250. 
Points of interest in its 
form of government, 251. 
Privileges of its nobles and 
people, J6. Its natural de- 
fects and political advan- 
tages, 252. Grant of the 
"privilege of union," ib, 
Supersession tliereof, ib.. 



253. The office of justi- 
ciary, it. Instances of the 
submission of kings to his 
decrees, 255, 256. Duration 
and resi)on.'^ibilities of the 
office, 256, 257. The Cortes 
of Aragon, 257, 258. Its 
union with Castile, 259. 

Archers (Englisli), invinci- 
bility of the, at Crecy and 
Poitiers, 40. {See 3Iilitary 
.Systems.) 

Architecture, as illustrative 
of domestic progress, 603. 
Early castles in England, 
ib. Improvements there- 
on, ib. Etirly houses, 604. 
Kevival of the useof bricks, 
605. Arrangement of ordi- 
nary mansion-houses, ib. 
Dwellings in France and 
Italy. 606. Introduction 
of "chimneys and glass 
windows, ib., and notes. 
House furniture and do- 
mestic conveniences, 607. 
Farm-houses and cottages, 
608. Ecclesiastical archi- 
tecture, its grandeur and 
varieties, 608-610. Domes- 
tic architecture of the 12th 
and 14th centuries. 678. 

Aribert declared king of 
Aquitaine, 66. 

Aristocracy. (See Nobility.) 

Aristotle, writings of, how 
first known in Europe, 646. 
Ignorance of his transla- 
tors, 647. Character of the 
Aristotelian ])hilosophy, 
648. Its influence on re- 
ligion, ib. 

Armagnac (count of), op- 
poses the Duke of Bur- 
gundy, 47. Massacre of 
himself and partisans, 48. 
Assassination of a later 
Count of Armagn.ac, 57 

Armagnacs, rise of the fac- 
tion of tlie, 47. Tnctics of 
the dauphin towtirdsthem, 
ib. Their league with 
Henry IV. of England, 4s. 
Their defeat by the Swiss, 
291. 

Armorial bearings, general 
introduction of. 92. 

Armorfcan republic, 1. .Sup- 
posed extent of its tefri- 
tories, 63. 

Armor. (See Military Sys- 
tems.) 

Arundel (bishop nnd arch- 
bishop), deprived of, and 
reinvested with, the great 
seal, 463. His subsecjuent 
deprivation and banish- 
ment, 466. 

(earl of, temp. Richard 

II.), his conduct as a lord 



appellant, 463. His breach 
with the Duke of I.anc;is- 
ter. 464. Uefuses toaid in 
legitimating Lancaster's 
children, ib. His decapi- 
tation, 460. 

Aschallenburg, concordats 
of. 372. 

Assize, .Justices of, 422. 

of Clarendon, 431. Text 

of, 641. 

Athens (duke of). (See Bri- 
enne.) 

Augustiu (St.), specimen of 
the verses of, 562, note. 

Aulic council, powers and 
jurisdiction of the, 282. 

Auspicius (bishop of Toul), 
character of the poetry ot, 
562. Specimen thereof, ib., 
note. 

Austrasia, characteristics of 
the people of, 3. 

Auxiliary verb active, prob- 
able cause of the, 560. 

Averroes, tendency of his 
commentaries, 648. 

Avignon, removal of the 
papal court to, 360. Uapa- 
city of its popes, 362, 364. 
Its abandonment by the 
popes, .364. 

Azincourt '(battle of), 49. 

B. 

Bacon (Roger), his acquaint- 
ance with mathematics, 
649, 650. Parallel between 
him and Lord I'.iicon, ib., 
note. His knowledge of 
Greek, 671. 

Bagd.ad, celebrity of theearly 
caliplis of, 295, 296. Char- 
acter of its later caliphs, 
297. Frequency of tlieir 
assassination, ib. Defec- 
tion of its provinces, tb. 

Bajazet, military successes 
of, 303. Defeated and cap- 
tured by the Tartars, 304. 

Baltic trade. (.See 'Trade.) 

Banks and bankers of Italy, 
599. 

Barbiano (Alberic di), mili- 
tary eminence of, 208. 
His pupils, ib. 

Barcelona, 7. Its early com- 
mercial eminence,. 593. Its 
code of maritime laws, 595. 
And of marine insurance, 
599, note. Its bank of de- 
posit, ib. 

Bardi, Florentine bankers, 
English customs farmed 
by the, 599. 

Barons (in France), <)C("i- 
sional assemblies of the 
109. Consequences of 
their non-attendance at 



BAlUnSTKli S. 



INDEX. 



CATALOSriA. 



683 



the royal council, 110. 
Tlii'y become subject to 
tlie luoiuirch, ib. Their 
])rivile^('s curtailed by 
rhilip IV., 111. (See No- 
bility.) 

IJairister's fees in the 15th 
century, 616. 

IJasle, council of. {See Coun- 
cil.) 

Beaumanoir, definition of 
the three conditions of 
men by, 96, 98, 106. 

Bedford (duke of), regent for 
Henry VI., 50. His char 
acter, ib. His successes in 
France, 51. Overthrow of 
his forces by Joan of Arc, 
52. 

Belgrade, siege and relief 
of, 287. 

Benedict XI. reconciles 
I'hilip the Fair to the holy 
see, 359. He rescinds the 
bulls of Boniface VIII., 
359, 360 

XII., his rn))acify, 362. 

XIII. elected jiojie by 

the Avignon cardinals, 
365. Deposed by the coun- 
cil of Fisa, 366. Spain 
supports him, ib. 

Benefices, grants of land so 
called, 77. Conditions an- 
nexed to them, 78. Their 
extent, ib. Charactei- of 
hereditary benefices, 91. 

Benevolences, by whom first 
levied in England, 536. 

Berenger I. and 11. (See 
Italy.) 

BermudoIII. (king of Leon), 
killed in battle, 229. 

Berry (duke of), appointed 
guardian of Charles VI., 
45. His character, 46. 

Bianchi. (See Superstitions.) 

Bianchi and Neri, factions 
of, 658. 

Bigod (Roger, earl of Nor 
folk), patriotism of, 435. 

Bills. (See I'arliament.) 

Birth, privileges of. (See 
Nobility.) 

Bishops. (See Church, 
Clergy.) 

Blanche of Castile, acts as 
regent during the minority 
of Louis IX., 2.3. Quells 
the rebellion of the bar- 
ons, ib. 

Boccaccio, appointed to lec- 
ture on Dante, 660. 

Boccanegr.i (Simon), first 
doge of Genoa, story of 
tlie election of, 198. 

Bocland, nature of, 388. 

Bohemia, nature of its con- 
nection with Gerniiniy, 
283. Its polity, 284. Tlie 



Hussite controversy and 
its results, 284, 285. 

Bohun (Humphrey, earl of 
Hereford), patriotism of, 
435. 

liolingbroke (earl of Derby 
and duke of Hereford), 
made lord apijellant, 463. 
He sides with the king, 
464, His quarrel with the 
Duke of Norfolk, 468. Ad- 
vantage taken of it by 
Kichard II., ib. His ac- 
cession to the throne, 470. 
(See Henry IV.) 

Bolognese law-schools, 641. 

Boniface (St.). (See Win- 
frid.) 

VIII. suspected of fraud 

towards Celestine V.,356. 
His extravagant preten- 
sions, ?6.. and note. Dis 
regard of his bulls by Ed 
ward I. , 357. Hisdispute; 
with I'hilip the Fair, 357- 
359. Success of I'hilii)'s 
stratagem against him, 
359. His death, ib. Be- 
scindment of his bulls, ib. 

IX., elected pope, 365. 

His traffic in benefices, 
367. His rapacity in Eng- 
liiiid checked, 372. 

Books and booksellers. (See 
Learning.) 

Boroughs. (See Municipal 
Institutions, Parliament, 
Towns.) 

Braccio di Montone, rivalry 
of, with Sforza, 208. 

Brienne (Walter do, duke of 
Athens), invested with ex 
trenie powers in Florence, 
185. His tyranny and ex 
cesses, 186. His over 
throw, ib. 

Brittany, origin of the peo- 
ple of, 63. Its annexation 
to the crown, ib. 

Brunehaut, queen of Austra- 
sia, .39. Her character and 
conduct, ib. She falls into 
the hands of Clotaire II., 
and is sentenced to death, 
ib. 

Burdett (Thomas), cause of 
the execution of. 535. 

Burgesses. (See I'arliament.) 

of the palisades, origin 

of tlie, 278. 

Burgundians, Roman prov- 
inces occu])ied by the, 1. 
Their mode of dividing; 
conquered in-ovinces, 70. 

Burgundy (Elides, duke ot^, 
undertakes the protection 
of his niece Jane, 34. He 
betriiys her cause, 35. 

((tuke of), named guar- 
dian of Charles VI., 45. 



Loses his ascendency over 
the, king, 40. Regains it; 
47. His death, ib. 

Burgundy {John, duke of, 
"Sanspeur "), assassinates 
the Duke of Orleans, 47. 
Obtains {)ardon for the 
crime, ib. Consequence of 
his reconciliation with the 
cou rt , 48. Is assassinated , 
ib. 

{Philip, duke of) allies 

himself with Henry \ ., 
50, His French i>redilec- 
tions,53. And treaty with 
Charles VII , ib. Splen- 
dor of his court, 58. 

{Charles, duke of), char- 
acter and ambitious de- 
signs of, 59. His contuma- 
cious subjects, ib. His 
rash enterprises and fail- 
ures, 60. Is defeated and 
killed, ib. 

■ {Mary, duchess of), de- 
fends her rights against 
Louis XL, 61. IMarries 
Maximilian of Austria; 
her death, ib. 

(kingdom of), 67. 

(law of), 138. 



Caballeros of Spain, privi- 
leges enjoved by the, 232. 

Calais, 41,44. 

Calixtins, tenets of the, 285. 

Calixtus II. (poi)e), comjiro- 
mise eti'ected by, 3.34. He 
abolishes feudal services 
by bishops, 335. 

Cambridge university, first 
mention of, 645. 

Canon law, promulgation of 
the, .342. Its study made 
imperative, 343. 

Capet (Hugh), usurpation of 
the French throne by, 13. 
State of France at his ac- 
cession, 17. His sources 
of revenue, 104. 

Carlovingian dynasty, ex- 
tinction of the, 13. 

Carrara (Francesco d.a), Ve- 
rona seized by, 204. Killed 
in prison, ib. 

Castile and Leon united into 
one kingdom, 229, 2.30. 
Their subsequent redivis 
ion and '•euniou, 233. 
Composition and cliarac 
ter of the Cortes of (';islilc 
(see Cortes), the council 
an<l its functions, 242. 244. 
Administration of jiisiici , 
245. .Similarity of its ]hji- 
ity to that of England, ib. 

Catalonia, character of the 
people of, 258. 



684 



CATHARISTS. 



INDEX. 



Catharists, religious tenet 
iR'ld by tlio, 622. 

Ci'lcstiiiv v., fiaiiil of Boni- 
face \ III. towards, 350. 

Cliainp de Mars. {See lield 
of Jlarcli.) 

Charlemagne, reunion of the 
Frankisa enii)ire under. 
His victories in Italy and 
Spain, ib. Obstinate re- 
sistance and ultimate sub- 
mission of the Saxons to 
his rule, ib. His Sclavo 
nian comiuests, 8. Ex- 
tent of liis dominions, ib. 
His coronation as eniper 
or, ib., and note. Its con- 
sequences, /6., y. His in- 
tellect tuii acijuiri'inents 
and domestic improve- 
ments, <t. liis vices, cru- 
elties, religious edicts, ib. 
His sons and successors, 
10, 11. His control over 
the clergy, II. Degenera- 
cy of his descendants, 13. 
State of the people under 
his rule, 15. His ilread of 
the Normans, 10. His al- 
leged election by the Ko- 
nians as eniijcror dis- 
cussed, ((7. I'eculiarities 
of Ills legislative assem- 
blies, 100, 107. His capit- 
ulary relative to tithes, 311. 
His authority over the 
popes, 330. State of his 
edncation, 505, and note. 
His library, 500, note. His 
encouragement of ordeals, 
5711. His agricultural col- 
onies, on. rublic schools 
in France due to him, 042. 
liecomes a disciple of AI- 
cuin, tb. 

Charles the Had. (.SV-e 
Charles of Navarre.) 

the l?ald, share of em- 
pire allotted to, 11, and 
note on 12. Ravages of 
tlie Xornuuis during his 
reign, 10. His slavish sub- 
mission to the Church, 3Ks, 
.•J.'O. 

the Fat, accession and 

deposition of, 12. Tosition 
of Germany at his death, 
20_>. 

the Simple, policy of 

towards tlie Normans, 17. 

1\'. (the Fair) ascends 

the tliidiie pursuant to the 
Salic law, 30. Conduct of 
Edward III. of England 
after his death, ib. 

V. (the AVise) submits 

to the peace of Bretigni, 

i 43. His summons to Ed- 
ward the Black Prince, ib. 
His successes against the 



English, 44. His prema 
ture death and character, 
45. His conflicts with the 
States-General, 113. He 
imposes taxes without 
their consent, ib. 

Charles VI ., accession of, 45. 
State of France during his 
reign, ib. Defeats the cit- 
izens of Ghent, ib. 31is 
application of taxes dur 
lug his minority, 40. His 
seizure with insanity, ib. 
Disgraceful conduct of h 
queen, ib., and note. His 
death, ib. His submission 
to the remonstrances of 
the States-General, 114 

VII., state of France 

at the accession of, 61. His 
impoverished exchequer 
ib. His character, and 
choice of favorites, 5~ 
Change wrought in his 
fortunes by .loan of Arc, 
ib. His connection with 
Agnes Sorel, 53, note. Re 
stores Richemont to pow 
er, ib. Is reconciled with 
the Duke of Burgundy, ib. 
Reconquers the provinces 
ceded to the English 
crown, 54. Consolidation 
of his power, ib. Insur- 
rection of Guienne against 
taxation, 55. His conduct 
relative to the States-Gen- 
eral, 110. He levies taxes 
of his own will, 117. He 
enacts the I'ragmatic 
Sanction of Bourges, 373. 

VII., accession of, 63. 

Contest for the regency 
during his minority, ib. 
Marries Amu; of Brittany, 
04. I'roceedings of the 
States-General during his 
minority, 110. 

of Aiijou (I. of Naples), 

seizure of the crown of 
Naples by, 17'.!. He puts 
Conradin, the heir, to 
death, ib. He defeats the 
Ghibelins and governs 
Tuscany, (fi. Revolt of his 
subjects, 174. 

— 1 1 . of Naples, war of the 
Sicilians against, 214. His 
death, ib. 

of Durazzo (III. of 

Naples), 215. Ruts Queen 
Joanna to death, ib. His 
assassination, 21(5. 

— IV. of (Germany, singu- 
lar character of, 275. His 
Golden Bull, ilt. He aden- 
ates the lni)ii-rial domains, 
270. Advancement.of Bo- 
hemia under his rule, 284. 

— Martel, conquest of the 



Saracens by, 6. His spo- 
liation of the Church, 73. 

Charks of Navarre (the 
Bad), tumults in France 
excited by, 41. His crimes, 
42. Allies himself with 
Edward III., 43. 

Charter of Henry I. and his 
successors, 413. Text of 
the Charter of Henry I., 
54S. The Great Charter, 
422, 552. 

Chartered towns. {See 
Municipal Institutions, 
Towns.) 

Chaucer (Geoffrey), testi- 
mony borne by his writ- 
ings, 513, note. Character 
of Ills works, 600. 

Childebert (son of Clovis), 
dominions allotted to, 3. 

Chilperic, guilty conduct of 
Fredegonde, the queen of, 
3. His attem])ts at poetry, 
502. His attack on the 
sanctuary, 575. 

Chilperic III., deposition of, 
0. 

Chimneys. (See Architec- 
ture.) 

Chivalry, as a school of 
moral discipline, 626. Re- 
moteness of its origin, ib. 
Individual honor its key- 
stone, 027. Types of chiv- 
alry, ib. Its original con- 
nection with feudal ser- 
vice, ib. Etlect of the Cru- 
sades, 62S. Its connection 
with religion, 02i.t. Enthu- 
siasm inspii-ed by galliuit- 
ry, 630-0:!2. Licentious- 
ness incident to chivalry, 
631. Virtues inculcated 
by it, 032. Practice of 
courtesy, liberality, and 
justice, ib., 633 Obliga- 
tions of chivalrv to the 
Fast, 634. Its attendant 
evils, ib. Education pre- 
paratory to knighthood, 
035. Chivalric festivals, 
ib. Tournaments and 
their dangers, 030. Privi- 
leges of knighthood, (;;i7. 
Who were admissible 
thereto, 638. Military 
service : knights and bach- 
elors, ib. Causes of the 
decline of chivalry, 639. 
Influences by which it was 
superseded, ib. 

Church, wealth of the, under 
the empire, 300. Its jjosi- 
tion after the irruption of 
the barbarians, ib. Source 
of its legitimate wealth, 
310. Its religions extor- 
tions, 311. Privileges at- 
tached to its property, ib. 



CITIES. 



INDEX. 



085 



Institution of titlies, 311, 
312, iind notes. Liabilily 
of C'liurch projiorty to 
spoliation, 312. Origin of 
precari(e, ih., note. Extent 
of tlie Cliurcli's landfd pos- 
sessions, ib., and nole. Its 
participation in tlieatlniin- 
istraliuu of justice, 313, 
314. Limitations inter- 
posed by Justinian, 3H. 
its political intluence, 31.^. 
Source thereof, ib. Its 
subjection to tlie state, 316. 
(Jliarleniagne's edicts rela- 
tive to its atlairs, ib. Its 
assumption of autliority 
ovtr tlie Frencli )iings,31?. 
Obscijuiousness of Kng- 
land to its pretensions, 318. 
Investiture of its bislio))s 
witli tlieir temjioralities, 
32U. Tlieir simoniacal 
practices, ib. CanoLis and 
cliapters, 3.55. Liberties of 
tlie Galilean Church, 374. 
I'rivileges of sanctuary, 
575. (See Clergy, Monas- 
teries, I'apal I'ovver.) 

Cities. (See Municipal Insti- 
lutions and Towns.) 

Civil Law. {See Laws.) 

Clarence (dulce of), put to 
<leath by Edward l\ ., 53<). 

Clarendon, constitutions of, 
3.13. Their influence on 
'J'homas a Hecket's quarrel 
with Henry n., .354. Text 
of, 549. 

Assize of, 431. Text of, 

550. 

Clement TV., effect of a bull 
promulgated by, 341). Op 
position of the .Scotch king 
to his edict, 351. 

v., his maxim relative 

to benefices, 349. He re- 
moves the papal court to 
Avignon, 3()0. England 
remonstrates with him, 
3(i3. 

VI. acquits Joanna of 

Naples of murder, 215. 
His licentiousness, .363. 

-■ VI 1., circumstances rel- 

aive lo his election as 
pope, 365. Division of 
the papacy thereupon, ib. 
Proceedings after his 
death, ('6. 

Clergy, their privileges un- 
der the feudal system, 
05. Fighting prelates, ib. 
Their participation in leg- 
islative proceedings, 107. 
Immense territorial pos- 
sessions of the clergy, 313. 
Their acquisition of polit- 
ical power, 315. Their 
neglect of the rule of celi- 



bacy, 327. iSuflerings of the 
married clergy, 32S. Lax 
morality of the Eiiglisii 
clergy, ib., note. Practice 
of simony, ib. Consent of 
the laity recjuired in the 
election of bishops, ib. 
Interference of the sover- 
eigns therein, 329. Taxa- 
tion of the clergy by the 
kings, 350. Tribute levied 
on them by the popes, ib. 
Their disall'ectioii towards 
Koine, 351. Their exemp- 
tion from temporal juris- 
diction, 353. Extortions 
of Edward 1., 356. Effects 
of Wicliffs principles, 372. 
S|)iritMal peers in the 
Englisli rarliament, 436. 
Tlieir qualifications, 490. 
Clergy suminoned to send 
representatives, 495. Cause 
of their being summoned, 
496. Uesnlt of their segre- 
gating themselves from 
the commons, 497. In- 
stances of their Parlia- 
mentary existence, 498, 
499. Their ignorance of 
letters, 565, 566. Their 
monastic vices, 575. (.S^(/ 
Churcb, Monasteiies, Pa- 
pal Power, Suiierstition.) 

Clisson (constable de), 46. 

Clodomir (son ofClovis), do- 
minions allotted to, 3. 

Clotaire, portion of domin- 
ions allotted to, 3. Union 
of the wliole under him, 
ib. Re-division among his 
sons, ib. 

II., reunion of the 

French dominions under, 
3. 

Clotilda converts her hus- 
band to Christianity, 2; 
her sons, 3. 

Clovis invades Gaul and de- 
feats Syagrius, 2. Accepts 
the title of consul, ib., and 
note. Defeats the Aleman- 
ni, ib. His conversion to 
Christianity, ib. Defeats 
Alaric, ib. His last ex- 
ploits and saii.guinary pol- 
icy, ib. Division of his 
dominions among his sons, 
3. His alleged subjection 
to the enqierors discussed, 
note III., 65. His limited 
authority : story of the 
vase of Soissons, 75. 

1 1., 4. 

Cobhani, lord (temp. Itich- 

ard II.), banished, 466. 
Coining, extensive jjrjietice 
of, among the French no- 
bles, 102. Debased money 
issued by them, ib. Sys- 



tematic adulteration of 
coin by tlie kings, 105. 
Measures adopted for rem- 
edying these frauds, ib. 

Coloni. characteristics and 
privilegt'S of the, 139. 

Combat. (See Trial.) 

Commodianus, literary re- 
mains of, 561. Siieeimen 
thereof, 562, note. 

Common Pleas, Court of, 
423. 

Comnenus. (See Alexius.) 

Confirniatio cliartarum, 475. 
Text of, 557. 

Conrad (duke of Franconia) 
elected emperor of Ger- 
many, 263. 

II. (the Salic), inqior 

tant edict of, relative to 
feuds, 80. Elected Ein 
peror of (ierniany, 2(1.3. 
— 111. joins in the second 
crusade, 28. Elected em- 
peror of Germany, 265. 

Conrad IV., accession of, 
164. His struggles for 
dominion in Italy, and 
death, ih. His dilliculties 
in Germany, 268. 

Conradin (son of Conrad 
JV.) attempts to regain 
his inheritance, 172. Put 
to death by Charles of 
Anjou, ib. 

Constance, council of. (See 
Council.) 
— , treaty of, 154. 

Constantine V. dethroned by 
his mother, 67. 

Constantinople, advanta- 
geous position of, 298. Its 
resistance to the ]\I(islciii 
assaults, ih. lis capture 
by the Latiis, .301. Its re 
capture by the (i reeks, il). 
Besieged "by Baja/et, .304; 
and by Amuratli, ih. At 
tacked bv .'Mohainmed II., 
306. Its' fall. ib. Unreal- 
ized schemes for its recov 
ery, ib. 

Constitution of England. 
(.SVfi English Constitution.) 

Cordova taken from the 
Jloors, 233. 

Corn. (See Agriculture, 
Trade.) 

Cortes of Castile, ori.iiinal 
composition of the, 240. 
Dwindling down of their 
numbers, ib. I'heir re- 
monstrance against cor- 
ruption, 241. Spiritual and 
temporal nobility, z7;. Con- 
trol of the Cortes over the 
taxes, 242. Their resolute 
defence of their right, 243. 
Their control over expend- 
iture, ib. Its active exer- 



086 



COKVINUS. 



INDEX. 



KNGLAND. 



cise, ib. Their forms of 
procedure, 'Hi. Their leg- 
ishitive rights andattenipt- 
e(i liiiiitatious thereon by 
the kings, ib., 245. Their 
right to a voice in the dis- 
jiDsal of the crown, 246. 

Corvimts (Mattliias) elected 
king ot Hungary, 287. His 
paironage of literature, ib.\ 

Council, Great, of Kiighiuil, 
■4!!, 421, 431. (See King's 
Council and Justice.) 

of IJasle, enmity of the, 

towards the papal court, 
369. liefornis eli'ected by 
it, «6. Its indiscretions, ib. 

of Con.stance condemns 

Jolin Huss and Jerome of 
Prague to be burned, 284. 
Deposes John XXIII., ;56C. 
Preponderance of Italian 
interests therein,. 367. Tac- 
tics of the cardinals, 368. 
National divisions in the 
council, ih. Its breach of 
faith relative to Huss and 
Jerome canvassed, 370, 
and vote. 

Council of Frankfort con- 
voked by .Saint IJoniface, 
321. Its importance in pa- 
l)al history, 322. 

of I-von's, 163. 

of I'avia, 3flS. 

of I'isa, i)roceedings at 

the, .3(i0. 

Cours i>lenieres, character of 
tlie, 10'.>. 

Court, King's, 421. 

of Connnon I'leas, 423. 

of K;xche(|ucr, 422. 

of King's r.eiich, 422. 

Crecy, battle of, 40. 

Crusades, origin of the, 25. 
Knergetic api)eals of Peter 
the Hermit, 20. Induce- 
ments offered to those who 
joined in them, ih. Crimes 
and miseries attendant on 
them, 21). Ilesults of the 
first Crusade, 28. Second 
Crusade, ih. Its failure, ib. 
Origin of the third Cru- 
sade, 20. Its famous com- 
manders and inconclusive 
results, ib. Crusades of St. 
Louis and their miserable 
ending, 30. Cause of the 
cessation of Crusades, 576. 
Their demoralizing influ- 
ence, 577. 

Curia Regis, 421. 

D. 

Dagobert I., insignificance 
of the successors of, 4. 

Damascus, degeneracy of 
the caliphs of, 296. 



Danes, English first infested 
by the, 16. 

Dante Aligliieri expelled 
from Florence, 179. His 
birth, 607. Characteristics 
of his great i)oeni, 658-660. 
Enthusiasm wliich attend- 
ed its i)ublicution, 600. 

Dauphin^ annexed to the 
French crown, 04. Its or- 
igin, ib., note. 

Decuriones, 139. 

Defensor Civitatis, 1.39. 

Defiance, institution of the 
right of, 280. Its aboli- 
tion, 281. 

De la Hare (Peter), opposes 
the Duke of Lancaster, 458. 
Conduct of the citizens 
on his imjirisonment, ib. 
Elected speaker of the 
Commons, 459. 

Derby (earl of). (See Bol- 
ingbroke.) 

Diet. (See Council.) 

])iet of Worms, important 
changes effected bv the, 
280. Abolishes the" right 
of defiance, 281. Estab- 
lishes the imperial cham- 
ber, ib., 282. 

Domestic life in the Middle 
Ages, ()01-604. Income and 
style of living, 616. 

Doomsday-book 611. 

Duelling, introduction of the 
l)r;ictice of, 570, and note. 

Du (iuesclin (Bertrand), pro 
ceeds to Castile, 42. Hi; 
character, 44. He serves 
iigainst Peter the Cruel, 
230. Is taken i^risoner, 
237. 

Dunstau and Odo, and their 
treatment of Edwy and 
Elgiva, 318. 

E 

Earl, origin of the title of, 
380. 

Ebroin, exercise of supreme 
power by, 4. 

Eccelin da Romano, tyran- 
nic exercise of power by, 
161. 

Ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 
(See Church, Clergy, Papal 
Power.) 

Edward the Confessor, pop- 
ularity of the laws of, 412, 
430. 

I. offends Philip IV. of 

France, 31. His brother 
Ednunid outwitted by 
Philip, 32. He curbs the 
power of the clergy, 354. 
His tyranny towards them, 
357. His reign a constitu- 
tional epoch, 434. His des- 



pot ic tendencies, ib. He 
confirms the charters, 435, 
and note. 

Edward II. marries Isabel of 
France, 34, He yields to 
the pope, 303. 

III. lays claim to the 

Frencli throne, 30. Its in- 
justice shown, ifc. His pol- 
icy prior to resorting to 
arms, 37. Princijial fea- 
tures in his character, 39. 
Extent of his resources, 
40. Excellence of his 
armies, ib. His aci|ui.<i- 
tion after the battles of 
Crecy and Poitiers, 41. 
His alliance with CharU-s 
the Bad, 42. Conditions 
of the peace of IJretigni, 
43. Hjs opposition to the 
pope, 30.'!. I'logress of 
Parliament under him, 
450. Ascendency of Lan- 
caster aiul Alice Ferrers 
over him, 457. Ordinance 
against Alice, 458. Repeal 
thereof, ib. Revival of the 
prosecution against her, 
459. His debts to Italian 
baidvers, 599 

the Hhick Prince, char 

acter of, ,39. His victory 
at Poitiers, 40. His im- 
politic conduct in (Jui- 
enne, 43. Summoned be- 
fore the peers of France, 
ib. Machinations relative 
to his heir, 458. His jeal- 
ousy of the Duke of Lan- 
caster, j7*. His death, ib. 

IV. accepts a pension 

from Louis XL, 57. His 
military force, ib. Louis's 
reasons for declining a vis- 
it from him, ib. His acces- 
sion to file throne, 535. 
His inexcusable barbari- 
ties, ih. Popularity of his 
government, 630. His sys- 
tem of benevolences, ib. 

Edwy and Elgiva. (See Dun 
Stan.) 

England, first infested by 
the Danes, 10. Its re- 
sources under Edward 
III., 40. Causes of the 
success of its armies, ib. 
High payment toils men- 
at-arms, 51, note. Discom- 
fiture of its troops by Joan 
of Arc, 52. Deprived of 
its French possessions by 
Charles VI L, 54. Its ob- 
sequiousness to the hie- 
rarchy, 318. Its opposition 
to ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion, 353, 354. Its protest 
against the exactions of 
the Church , 363. Its share 



ENGLAND. 



INDEX. 



FEUDAL. 



687 



in the Council of Con- Eiifjl's'i constitution, cliar- 



stance, 367. Knactnient of 
tlie statute of pra?iiuinire; 
371. Effect of Wiclitf's 
principles, 372. Progress 
of the country under the 
Anglo-Sa.xons. (^ee An- 
glo-Saxons.) Its state at 
the period of the Norman 
conquest, 400, 40L Fruit- 
less resistance of its peo- 
ple to Norman rule, 401, 
and note. Expulsion of its 
prelates and maltreatment 
of its nobles, ib., 40^', and 
note. Wholesale sjjolia- 
tion of property, 40J. Ab- 
ject condition of Englisli 
occupiers, ih., 403. Vast- 
ness of the Norman es- 
tates explained, 40.3. Con- 
quered England compared 
with conquered Gaul, 404. 
Forest devastations and 
forest laws, ib. Depopu- 
lation of the towns, 405. 
Establishment of feudal 
customs, 400. Preserva- 
tion of the public peace, 
407. Difference between 
feudalism in P^ngland and 
in France, ib.. 408. Ha- 
tred by the Englisli of the 
Normans, 408. Oppres- 
sions and exactions of the 
Norman government, ib. 
409. Nature of the taxes 
then levied, 400-410. Law; 
and charters of tlie Nor 
man kings, 411-412. lian 
ishment of Longchamp by 
the barons, 41.3. Estab- 
lishment of Magna Char 
ta, 414. Difficulty of over- 
rating its value, ib. Out- 
line of its provisions, 415. 
Confirniation thereof by 
Henry III., 416. Constitu- 
tional struggles between 
him and his barons, 418 
41lt. Limitations on the 
royal prerogative, 418, 420, 
Institution of the various 
courts of law, 421, 423 
Origin of the common law, 

424, 425. Character anil 
defects of the English law, 

425, 426. Hereditary right 
of the crown estal)lished, 

426, 427. Legal position 
of the gentry, 428, 429. 
Causes of civil equality, 
429, 430. Character of its 
government, 505. Prerog- 
atives of its kings, 50.5-507. 
Mitigation of the forest 
laws, ,'J07. .Jurisdiction of 
its constable and marshal, 
508. Its customs farmed by 
Italian bankers, 599. 



acterof the,5lis. Sir .lolm 
Fortescue's doctrine, 509, 

510. Hume's erroneous 
views regarding it, 510, 

511. Causes tending to 
itsfornuitio'i, 512, 513. Ef- 
fect of the loss of Nornnin- 
dy, 513. Peal source of 
English freedom, 514, 515. 
Principle involved in the 
relationship between lords 
and tiieir vassals, 515. 
Pigbt of distress on the 
king's property, ib. Feu- 
dal sources of constitu- 
tional liberty, 516. Influ- 
ence of the nobility, ib. 
Salutary provisions of Ed- 
ward I., 519. Nature and 
gradual extinction of vil- 
lenage,o21, 522. Instances 
of regencies and principles 
whereon they are founded, 
524-526. Doctrine of pre- 
rogative, 531. (.See Anglo- 
Saxons, England, Feudal 
System, Parliament.) 

Englisli language and liter- 
ature, 663i 664. 

Erigena. (See Scotus — 
.John.) 

Ethelwolf, gr.ant of, relative 
to tithes, 312, note. 

Eudes (duke of Purgundy). 
See Burgundy.) 

Eudon signally defeats the 
Saracens, 66. Peceivesaid 
from Charles Martel, ib. 

Eugenius IV. (cardinal .Ju- 
lian). His contests with 
tlie councils, 369. 

Excliequer, Court of, 421. 

F. 

F.alse Decretals. (.Sec I 
dore.) 

Feli.x V. (pope), election and 
supersession of, .369. 

Ferdinand confirmed in his 
succession to the crown 
of Najdes, 220. Attempt 
of .John of Calabria to 
oust him, 220. His odious 
ruh', 224. 

I. of Aragon, independ- 
ence of the Catalans tow- 
ards, 258. 

II. of Aragon, marries 

Isabella of Castile, 2.39 
'J'bey succeed to tlie Cas- 
tili:iii tlirone, ib Ferdi 
nand invested with flu 
crown of Aragon, 250. Ar- 
rangement of the united 
governments, 259. Con 
quest of Granada, 260. 

III. of Castile, capture 

of Cordova bv. 23:;. 



Ferdinand IV. of Castile, 
prevalence of civil dissen 
sions in the reign of, 237. 
'eudal system, rise of the, 
69. Nature of allodial and 
salic lands, 70, 71, and 
notes. Distinction of laws, 
73. Origin of nobility, 76. 
Fiscal lands or benefices, 
their nature, condition, 
and extent, 77, 78. Intro- 
duction of subinfeudation, 
78. Origin of feudal ten- 
ures, 79. Custom of per- 
sonal commendation, ib. 
Its character, ib. Edict of 
Conrad II., 80. Principle 
of a feudal relation, 81. 
Rights and duties of vas- 
sals, ib. Ceremonies of 
homage, fealty, and in- 
vestiture, ib. Obligations 
of the vassal to his lord, 

82. Military service, its 
conditions and extent, ib., 
and 7ioie. Feudal inci 
dents : Origin of reliefs, 

83. Of lines on alienation, 
ib. Escheats and forfeit- 
ures, 84. Objects for which 
aiils were levied, ib. Lim- 
itations thereof by Magna 
Cliarta, ib. Institution of 
wardships, 85. Their vex- 
atious cliaracter in later 
times, ib. Extortionate 
and oppressive practices 
relative to marriages, ib. 
Introduction of improper 
feuds, 86. Fiefs of office, 
their nature and variety, 

87, and note. Feudal law- 
books, ib. Difference be- 
tween that and the French 
and English systems, ib., 

88. The feudal system 
not of lloinan origin, 89. 
Localities over which it ex- 
tended, 90, 91. Privileges 
of nobility, 91-93. Differ- 
ence between a French 
roturier and an English 
commoner, 93, note. Con 
dition of the clergy, 95. Of 
the classes below the gen 
try. 96, 97. Assemblies of 
the barons, 100. Tliecours 
plenleres, ib. Legislative 
and judicial assemblies 
(.see Legislation, States- 
General, Justice). De 
cline of the feudal system, 
124, 125. Its causes: In- 
crease of the domains of 
the crown, 12S. Rise of 
the chartered towns, 129- 

131 (.s-ec Towns). Commu- 
tation of military service, 

132 (xee Military .Systems). 
Decay of feudal principles, 



688 



FIEFS. 



INDEX. 



GAUL. 



]34. luHuence of feudal- 
ism upon the iiistivutious 
of Eiigliuid aud France, 
130. Civil freedom pro- 
moted by it, ib. Its tend- 
ency to exalt warlike hab- 
its, 137. Its value as an 
element of discijilinc, ib. 
Aud as producing senti- 
ments of loyalty, ib. 
Question of the existence 
of feudal tenures in Eng- 
land prior to the Con- 
quest, 3^8-390. Feudalism 
under the iS'ormans, 405. 
Innovation introduced bv 
William I., 406. Difter- 
ence between the feudal 
policy of England and 
I'^rance, 407. Tenure of 
folcland aud bockland, 
.388. Abuses of feudal 
rights, .507. 

Fiefs. (See Benefices, Feu- 
dal System.) 

Field of Jlarch (or Champ 
de Mars), origin of the as- 
semblies so termed, 106. 
Their character, ib. 

Field Sports. (See Sports.) 

Fines, extent and singu- 
larity of, under the An- 
glo-Norman kings, 409, 
410. 

Fire-arms. {See Military 
Systems.) 

Fiscal lands. (.See Bene- 
fices.) 

Flanders, .32. Successful re- 
sistance of its people, ib. 
Tlieir commerce with Eng- 
land, 40. Thtir rebellion 
against Count Louis, 45 
Tlieir woollen manufac- 
ture, .WS, 5s6. Their set- 
tlement in England, 587. 
Its policy relative thereto, 
ib. (.WTrade.) 

Florence : exclusion of the 
Ghibelins from offices of 
trust, ISl. Dante's simile 
relative to its unsettled 
state, ib. Corporations of 
the citizens, 182. Its ma- 
gistracy, i6. (Jurious mode 
of election, ib. The Con- 
siglio di popolo, 1S3. De- 
fiance of law by the nobil- 
ity, 184. (iiancididla Bella 
reduces them to obedi- 
ence, ib. Uise of the ple- 
beian aristocracy, 185. 
Walter de Brienne in- 
vested with extraordinary 
powers, ib. His tyranny 
and excesses, ISfi. Mi 
overthrow, ib. Singular 
ordinances relative to the 
nobles, ib. Machinations 
of the Guelfs and persecu 



tions of the Gliibelins, 187, 
188. I'rostratiou of the 
Guelfs, 189. Insurrection 
of the Ciompi and eleva- 
tion of Lando, ib. His 
judicious administration, 
ib. Restoration of the 
Guelfs, 190. Comparative 
security of the Floren- 
tines, ib. Their territo- 
rial acquisitions, revenue, 
population, etc., ib., 191. 
IMsa bought by them, 192. 
Further disquietudes in 
their government, 221. 
Rise of the Medici (see 
Sledici), ib. Florentine 
bankers aud their transac- 
tions, 599. 

Folcland, nature of, 388. 

Foreigners invested with 
power in Italian states, 
172, 179, 182, 186, 196. 

Forest laws of the Anglo- 
Norman kings, 404. Miti- 
gation of their severity, 
507. runishmentsinflicted, 
580. 

Fortescue (Sir John), on the 
English constitution, 509. 

France, policy observed in 
the territorial division of, 
2, 3. Insignificance of its 
early monarchs, 4, and 
7iote. Loss of the English 
possessions in, 21. In 
crease of the French do- 
mains, .30, 31. Its state at 
the commencement of bos 
tilities by Kdwurd I II., ,36. 
Its condition after the 
battle of Poitiers, 41. As 
sembly of the StatesGen 
eral,4I,42 Desolation of 
the kingdom by famint 
42, and note. Ravaged by 
banditti, ib. The jacquc 
rie insurrection, ib. State 
of the country under 
Charles V. and VI., 44-48. 
Under Charles VII., 51-55 
Consolidation of its do 
minions, 64. Its histori 
ans, 68. Its progress from 
weakness to strength, 101 
Revenue of its kings, how 
rai.Ncd, 104. Its coinage, 
104. Taxation, 104, 105, 112. 
Designs of its kings upon 
Naples, 224. 

Franconia, rise of the house 
of, 263. Its extinction, 270. 

Frankfort, council of. {See 
Council.) 

Franks, territories occupied 
by the, 2, and note. Their 
probable origin, 65. Their 
])Osilion under Tepiu, 5. 
Character of their (!hurcli 
dignitaries, 71. Increase 



of the power of their 
kings, 76. Serfdom and 
villenage among them, 
98. Extent to which they 
participated in legislation, 
106. Origin of the Ripu 
arian Franks and Salian 
Franks, 72, 138. Tlieir 
numbers during the reign 
of Clovis, 73. 

Fredegonde, queen. (.See 
Chil[)eric.) 

Frederick I. (Frederick Bar 
barossa), third crusade un 
derlaken by, 29. Com- 
mencement of his career 
in Italy, 150. He besieges 
Milan, ib. Subjugation 
and second rise of its citi 
zens, 151. Destruction of 
their city, ib. League of 
liOmbardy against him, 

152. His defeat and flight, 

153. I'eace of Constance, 

154. His policy relative to 
Sicily, ib. His accession 
to the German throne, 266. 
Henry the Lion's ingrati 
tude towards him, ib. 
He institutes the law of 
defiance, 280. His forced 
submission to Pope Adri- 
an IV., 338. His limita- 
tion on the acquisition of 
property by the clergy, 355. 
His patronage of learning, 
434. 

11., position of, at his 

accession, 159. Cause of 
his excommunication by 
Gregory IX., 160. Result 
of his crusade, ib. His 
wars with the Lombards, 
ib. His successes and de- 
feats, 162. Animosity of 
the popes towards him, 163. 
Sentence of the Council of 
Lyons against him, ib. 
His accession to the Gcr 
man throne, 267. His 
deposition, 268. 

III. of Germany, char 

acter of the reign of, 276 
His significant motto, 277, 
note. Objects of his diets, 
281. He betrays the em 
pire to the pope, .372. 

Freemen, 96. Consequence 
of their lYiarriage with 
serfs, 99. 

Fregosi and Adorni factions, 
198. 

G 

Gandia (duke of), claims U:.- 
throne of Aragon, 250. 

Gaul invaded by Clovis, 2. 
Condition of its Roiiiau 
natives, 71. Privileges of 
the " coiiviva regis," ib. 



OeNOA. 



INDEX. 



HENRY. 



G89 



Reteotioii of their own 
laws by the lioiiuins, ib. 
Their cities, ib. Their 
subjection to taxation, ib. 
Tlieir accession to high of- 
tices, 74. 

Genoa, early history of, 192. 
Her wars with Pisa and 
Venice, li)3. Victory of 
her fleet over I'isani, 194. 
Insolence of her admiral 
towards the Venetian am- 
bassadors, ib. Her subse- 
quent reverses, 196. Sur- 
render of her forces to 
Venice, »6. Decline of her 
power, ib. Her govern- 
ment and its various 
changes, ib. Dissensions 
of the Guelfs and Ghibe- 
lins, 197. Her first doge, 
198. Frequent revolutions 
of her citizens, ib. The Ad- 
orni and Fregosi factions, 
ib. Commercial dealings 
of the Genoese, 591. Their 
position in Constantino- 
ple, 593. Their manufac- 
tures, ib. Their money 
transactions, 597, 598. 
State security taken by 
tlieir bankers, ib.. 599. 

Germany conquered by 
Charlemagne, 7. Passes 
away from his family, 12. 
Its Hungarian assailants, 
15. r<)litical state of an 
cicnt Germany, 69. Lands 
in conquerecl provinces, 
how divided, 70. Customs 
respecting allodial and sal- 
ic lands, ib., 71, and notes. 
Superior position of its 
rulers as compared with 
those of France, 100, 101. 
Its position at the death of 
Charles the Fat, 262, 263. 
Election of its emperors, 
in wliom vested, 209, 270. 
Partitions of territory 
among its princes, 27-3, 
274. Importance of its 
free cities, 277. Privileges 
conferre<l on them, ib. 
Their warfare with the 
nobles, 278. The sanctu- 
ary of the palisades, i^. 
League of the cities, ib. 
Polity of tlie»princi)iali- 
ties, 279 Extent of tlie 
imperial domains, ih. 
Their gradual alieiiafion 
by the enijjerors, (7). Tin 
Diet of Worms and its re- 
suits, 281. I^imils of the 
German empire at various 
periods, 283. Absence 
of towns, 581. Pre-emi- 
nence of its robber chief 
582. (SfceDiet, .lustice.) 



Ghent, impregnability of, 60. 
Its trading eminence, 586. 

Ghibelins, origin of the 
word, 157. {See Guelfs.) 

Gloucester, duke of ^temp. 
Kichard 11.), made lord ap 
pedant, 463. Reinstated 
in the council, ib. His 
animosity towards the 
Duke of Lancaster, 464. 
His seizure by the king, 
466. His murder and post- 
humous attainder, ib. 

Godfrey of Boulogne, East- 
ern domains assigned to, 
28. 

Granada, fertility and im- 
portance of, 259. Its una- 
vailing resistance to Fer- 
dinand, 260. 

Gratian, character of the 
Decretum compiled by, 
.342. 

Greek empire, degeneracy 
of the, 294. Revival of its 
power, 298. Exploits of 
celebrated usurpers, ib. 
Results of the first Cru- 
sade, 300. Expeditions of 
Alexius Comnenus, ib. 
Partition of the empire, 
.301. Its declining state, 
302. Ijiikewarmness of 
the Western (Christians, 
.303. Fall of the empire, 
.305. The last of the Cx- 
sars, ib. (See Constanti- 
nople.) 

Gregory I., character of, 320. 

IV. and v., submission 

of, to imperial authority, 
330. 

VII., projection of the 

Crusades by, 26. His obli- 
gations to the countess 
Matilda, 1.56. His ascend- 
ency over the clergy, 3.32. 
Elected Pope, ib. His dif 
ferences with, and excom 
munication of, Henry IV 
of (Jermany, ib., 333 and 
note. Rigorous hiimilia 
tion inijiosed by him oi 
Ilenrv,333. His exile and 
death', 3.34. His declara 
tion against investitures 
3.36. His illimitable am 
bit ion and arrogance, ib 
His des|)otisni towards ec 
clesiastics, 337. 

I.\., exconimnnicafions 

of iM-ederick II bv, 160, 
163. His fnrtli.'r designs 
against Frederick, 163. 
Decretals published by 
his order, 342. His en- 
croacliments on the Eng- 
lish Church, 348. His pre 
text for levving contribu 
tious, 350. Immense sum 



extorted by him from Eng- 
land, ib. 

Gregory XI. reinstates the 
papal court at Rome, 304. 
— .\II. elected and de- 
posed, 365, .366. 

Grimoald, usurpation of su- 
preme jiower by, 4 

Grostete (Robert, bishop of 
Lincoln), 671. 

Guarnieri (duke), systematic 
levy of contributions by, 

206. Success of his opera- 
tions, ib. 

Guelfs and Ghibelins, origin 
of the rival factions of, 
157. Their German ante 
cedents, ib. Characteris 
tics of the two parties, ib. 
Irrationality of the dis- 
tinctions, 172. Exijulsion 
of the Ghibelins from 
Florence, 173. Revival of 
their party, 175. Origin 
of the name Guelfs, 266. 
{See Florence, Genoa.) 

Gui de Lusignan, cause of 
his flight from France. 26. 

Guienne, seized by Philip 
IV., 31. Restored to Eng- 
land,. 32. 

Guiscard (Robert), territori- 
al conquests of, 145. He 
takes Leo IX. prisoner, ib. 
His English opponents at 
Constantinople, 402. 

(Roger), conquers .Sici- 
ly, 145. Declared king by 
Innocent II., j6. He shel- 
ters Gregory VII., 3.34 He 
subjugates AmalH,592. He 
introduces silk manufac- 
tures at Palermo, 593. 

Gunpowder. {See Military 
Systems.) 

H. 

Ilanse towns, confederacy 
of the, .W9. 

Ilaroun Alraschid, magnili- 
cence of the rule of, 295. 

Hastings, Loid {temp. Ed- 
ward IV.), receives bribes 
from Louis XI., 57. 

Hawkwood (Sir John), mili- 
tary renown accjuired bv, 

207. Gratitude of the Klo 
rentines towards him, Hi. 
His skill as a general, ih. 

Haxey (ThoniasK surren- 
dered by the Conimmis to 
the vengeance of Kicli.inl 
11., 465, 482. Iniport.-int 
princ!])les involved in his 
(^ase, 465, votes. 

Henry IL of Castile rebels 
against Peter the ('ruel, 
237. His defeat and sub- 
seijuent victory, ib. 



690 



HENRY. 



INDEX. 



ITALY. 



Henry III. of Castile marries 
.loliu of Giiunt's daugliter, 
2Z7. 

IV. of Castile, despica- 

% ble character of, 238. De- 

posed by a conspiracy of 
nobles, 23'.). Futile efforts 
of his daughter to succeed 
him, ib. Contests after 
ids death, ib. 

1, of England, extor- 
tions on the Church by, 
350. 

ir. marries the repudi- 
ated wife of Louis Vll.,20. 
Oi)i>oses the tyranny of 
the Church of Rome, 353. 
Cause of his dispute with 
Thomas a Becket, 354. 

in. allows Italian 

priests in English bene- 
tices, 348. Abets papal 
taxation on the clergy, 
.350. I'rovisions contained 
in his charter, 415. VVorth- 
lessness of his character, 
47. His perjuries, ib His 
pecuniary difficulties and 
extortions, 418. His ex- 
pensive foreign projects, 
4 ly. Demands of the pope 
and resolute conduct of 
the barons, ib. 

IV., policy and views 

of, towards France, 44,48 
Circumstances attending 
his succession, 4(ii>. Inva- 
lidity of his hereditary 
title, 470. His tactics tow 
ards the Parliameni, 47! 
Aid granted to him ii 
1400, 472. Policy of the 
Commons towards him, 

473. Limitations imposed 
on him, 470. He comes to 
terms with them, 477. (See 
Bolingbroke.) 

v., his exorbitant de 

mands on proposing to 
marry Catherine of 
France, 4',). Invasion of 
France by, ib. His nego- 
tiations with the Duke of 
Burgundy, ib. His mar- 
riage and death,. 'iO. Life 
subsidies granted to him, 

474. Improbability of liis 
alleged (lissohiteness, 478. 
His claims on popular af- 
fection, ib. Hi,-< clemency 
to the Earl of >Iarch, 53.3. 

VI., Parliamentary pol- 
icy during the minority 
of, 470. Unpopulaiity of 
his marriage, ib. His con- 
duct on Suffolk's impeach- 
ment, ib, 480, State of 
the kingdom during his 
minority, 520. His imbe- 
cility, i6. Solemnities ob- 



served in nominating a re- 
gency during his infancy, 
529. Provisions in conse- 
quence of his mental in- 
firmities, ib. 

Henry VII., conduct of, to- 
wards tlie memory of his 
predecessors, 5.36. 

I., the Fowler, elected 

emperor of Germany, 202. 

II. of Bavaria, elected 

emperor of Germany, 263. 

III. of (iermany, im- 
perial influence extended 
by, 263. Instances of bis 
exercise of absolute pow- 
er, ib., 280. His judicious 
nomination of popes, 331. 

IV. of (iermany, primary 

cause of the nusfortunes 
of, 263. Conspiracy against 
him during his infancy, 
264. His excommunica- 
tion and its consequences, 
ib. His contests with 
Gregory VI L, 332, 333. His 
humiliation by (Jregory, 
.33.3. The tables turned, 334. 

V^. of Germany, acces- 
sion and death of, 265. 
His compromise with the 
popes, 334. 

VI. of Germany, his 

ambitious project, 267. 
His death, ib. 

VII. of Germany, ac- 

qinres Bohemia for his 
son, 274. His opposition 
to the pajial power, 360. 

the Proud, ancestry 

and possession.s of, 266. 
Consequences of his diso 
bedienee to the emperor's 
summons, ib. 

the Lion restored to lii> 

birthright, 266. Fatal re 
suits of ids ingratitude, 
ib. 

Hereditarv succession, disrc 
garded by the Anglo- .Sax- 
ons, 378. Establishment 
of the principle in Eng- 
land, 426-428. 

Hereford (earl and duke 
of.) See Bohun, Boling- 
broke.) 

Hildehrand. (.See Gregory 
VII.) 

Honorius II I., establishment 
of medicant orders by, 
.344. 

Hugh Capet. (,Sce Capet.) 

Hungarians, ravages in Eu- 
rope by the, 15. Their con- 
version to Christianity, 
286. Their wars with the 
Turks, ib., 2S7. 

Hungary, kings and chiefs 
of (See .Andrew, Corvi- 
nus, llunniades, Ladis- 



laus, Louis of Hungary, 
Sigismund, Wladi^laus.) 

Hunniades (John), heroic 
career of, 287. His death, 
ib. 

Huss (John), burned to 
death, 284. Characteris- 
tics of his schism and his 
follow'ers, 625. 



I. 



Innocent III., persecution 
of the All)igeois by, 22. 
His ambitious policy, 156. 
His significant production 
of the will of Henry \'I. of 
Germany, ib. Position of 
the Italian cities towards 
him, ib Use made by 
him of his guardianship 
of Frederick II., 158. In- 
crease of tenqxn-al authori- 
ty under him, 170. His ac- 
cession to the pajjal chair, 
341. Extravagance of his 
pretensions, ib. His de- 
crees and interdicts, .342. 
His interference with the 
German emperors, J't. His 
claim to nominate bishops, 
347. He levies taxes on the 
clergy, 350. His pretext 
for exercising jurisdic- 
tion, 352. Hee.xempts the 
clergy from crindnal pro- 
cess. 353. 
IV., outrageous pro- 
ceedings of, against Fred- 
erick 11., 163. He quarters 
Italian priests on England, 
348. 

VI. elected pope, 305. 

Interdicts, 325. (See Papal 

Power.) 
Ireland a mediaeval slave de- 
pot, 584. 
Isabel of Bavaria (queen of 
Charles VI.), infamous 
conduct of, towards her 
husband, 46. Her hatred 
of Armagnac, and its con- 
sequences, 48. Joins in 
the treaty with Henry V., 
.50. 
Isabel of France, marries 
Edw.ard II. of England, 35. 
Isabella %f Castile. (.See 

Ferdinand II.) 
Isidore, publication of the 
False Decretals of, 322. 
Tlieir character and object, 
ib. Authority accorded to 
them by Gratian, 342. 
Italy, occupied by the Ostro- 
goths, 1. Its subjection by 
the Lond)ards, 6. (;()n- 
qnests of Pejjin and Charle- 
magne, 7. Its state at the 



JACQUERIE. 



INDEX. 



I-ADISLAUS. 



691 



end of the ninth century, 
HO. Authorities referred 
to for its liistory, '^i;o, nott 
Its monarchs IJereiiffer 1. 
and II., HO, HI, and note. 
Assumption of power by 
Otho the Great, HI. Exe- 
cution of Crescentius by 
Otlio III., HJ. Election 
an<l subsequent troubles of 
Ardoin, ib. Condition of 
Its people under Henry II. 
H-', H;i. Cause of its' sub- 
jection to German princes, 
H:i. Accession of Conrad 
II , and consolidation of 
Germanic intiuences, ib. 
Its Greek provinces. Ho. 
Incursions and successes 
of the Normans, 145, 146. 
Progress of the Lombard 
cilies. (See Lombards.) 
Accession of Frederick 
Barbarossa, 149. {See 
Fre<lerick I.) Its domestic 
manners, 600, 602. 



Jacquerie, insurrection of 
the, 42 

James II. of Aragon, re- 
nounces tlie Sicilian 
crown, 214. Undertakes 
the conquest of Sardinia, 
■JH. 

Jane of Navarre, treaty en- 
tered into on behalf of, 
34. IJetrayal of her cause 
by the Duke of Burgundy, 
.35. 

Janizaries, institution of 
the, 306. 

Jerome of Prague, burned 
to death, 284. 

Jerusalem, foundation of 
the kingdom of, 28. Its 
conquest by Saladin, 20. 
Restored to the Christians 
by the Saracens, ib. Title 
of tlie kings of Naples to 
sovereignty over it, 1.59. 

Jews, wealth amassed and 
persecutions endured by 
the, 104. Their early celeb- 
rity as usurers, ib. Their 
final expulsion from 
France, ib. Ordinances 
against them, HO. Exorbi- 
tant rates paid by them in 
England, 409. Their mas- 
sacre by the Pastoureaux, 
580. Their liability to 
maltreatment, 572. Their 
early money dealings, 598. 
Toler.ation vouchsafed to 
them, ib. Decline of their 
trade, 599. 

Joau of Arc, character, suc- 



cesses, and fate of, 52. If er 
name and birthplace, ib., 
note. 

Joanna of Naples, married to 
Andrew of Hungary, 215 
Her liusband's murder im 
puted to her, ib. She die; 
by violence, ib. 

II. of Naples, and her 

favorites, 217. Her vacil 
lation relative to her sue 
cessors, ib 

.John I. of Castile, accession 
of, 2.37. 

II of Castile, wise gov 

ernment by the guardians 
of, during his infancy, 23 
He disgraces and destroys 
his favorite Alvaro de Lu 
na,230. His death, i6. Its 
results, 239 

(king of England), cited 

before I'lulip Augustus, 21 
Results of his contumacy 
lb. Singular tines levied 
by him, 410. His rapacity 
411. Magna Charta, 414, 
415. 

I. of France, birth and 

de.-ith of, .35. 

11. of France, character 

of, 39. Submits to the 
peace of Bretignl, 43. His 
resi)onse to the citizens 
of Uochelle, lb. 

of Procida, designs of 

on Sicily, 213. Results of 
his intrigues, ib. 

VIII. (pope), asserts a 

right to nonunate the em- 
peror, 326. 

.XXII. (pope), claims su 

premacy over the empire 
300. His dispute with 
Louis of Bavaria, 361. He 
persecutes the Fr.anci 
cans, 362. His immense 
treasures, .3(')3. 

.\X III. (pope), convokes 

and is deposed by the 
Council of Constance, 3li( 

Jnditli of Bavaria, niarrie 
Louis tlie Debonair, 11. 

lulian's betrayal of Spain to 
the Moors: credibility of 
the legend, 228. 

lury. {See Trial by .fury.) 

Justice, administration of, 
under Charlemagne, 119, 
120. Various kinds of feu- 
dal jurisdiction, ib. .Judi- 
cial privileges assigned to 
theownersof liefs,/i. Trial 
by combat, 121, and note. 
The establishments of St. 
Louis, 122. Liniit.itions on 
trial by combat, ib. Royal 
tribunals and tlieir juris- 
diction, 123. The ('ourt of 
peers, ib. The Parliament 



of Paris and its lawyers, 
124, 125. Imperial chani- 
b<M- of the empire, 282. 
Its functions and jurisdic- 
tion, ib. The six circles 
and the A ulic council, /V^. 
Character of the king's 
court in England, 421. Ini- 
portauce of the office of 
ciiief justiciary, ib., note. 
Functions of the Court of 
E.\clie(pier, 422, and note. 
Institution of justices of 
assize, 422, 423. Estab- 
lishment of the Court of 
Common Pleas, 423 Ori- 
gin of the common law, 
424. Dilference between 
the Anglo-Saxon and An- 
glo-Norman systems of 
j ur isprudence, 424, 425. 
Complicated character of 
Euglisli laws, 425. Juris- 
diction of the king's coun- 
cil, 600-505. Rarity of lu- 
stances of illegal condem- 
nation, 511. 



King's council (England), ju- 
risdiction of the, 500. Its 
composition, ib. Its en- 
croachments, 501. Limi- 
tations on its power, 502. 
Remonstrances of the 
Commons, ib. Its legis- 
lative status, 503. Its fre- 
quent junction with the 
Lords' house, 50.3-505. 

Bench, court of, 422. 

Knighthood. (.S^e Chivalry.) 

Knights Templars, institu- 
tion of the order of, 29. 
Their large possessions 
au<l rajiacity, ib. (Jnestion 
of their guilt and inno- 
cence, .32. Count Purg- 
stall's charges against 
lluMU, 33. Raynouard's 
attempted refutation, 34. 
Their estates and remark- 
able influence in Spain, 
232. 

Koran, cliaracteristics of the, 
294. 

L. 

Laborers, amount of wages 
paid to, ()16. Degree of 
comfort tliereby indicated, 
ih. 

Ladislans of Naples, acces- 
sion of, 216. Energy dis- 
plaved by him, ib. His 
death, 217. 

— of llungarv, defeat of 
the partisans of, 286. His 



692 



LANCASTER. 



INDEX. 



LOMBARDS. 



accession to the throne, 
ib. His death, '^87. 

Lancaster (dulie of), ascend- 
ency of, over Edward 
III., 457. His ambitious 
projects, 458. Cause of liis 
retirement from court, 459. 
His quarrel witli Arundel 
and (iloucester, 464. His 
marriage witli Katherine 
Swineford, ib. His ante- 
nuptial children by her, 
ib. Conduct of Kichard 
II. on his death, 465 

Lancastrians and Yorkists, 
wars of the, 533, 534. 

Lando (Michel di), cause of 
the elevation of, 189. His 
just e.Kerciseof power, 189, 
190. 

Lanfranc (archbishop), arro- 
gant conduct of, 401, note. 

Languedoc, spread of the 
Albigensian heresy in, 22, 
and note. Devastation of 
the country by the papal 
forces, ib. Its cession to 
the crown of France, 28. 
Its provincial assembly, 
117. 

Latimer (lord), impeached 
by the Commons, 457. 

Latin tongue, corruption of 
the, 557. (See Learning.) 

Laura (I'etrarch's mistress). 
(See I'etrarch.) 

Laws, characteristics of, at 
certain periods, 138. Study 
of the civil law, 640. Kami' 
of the IJolognese scliool, 
641. Unpopularity of the 
Roman law in Kngland, 
ib. (.?ec Justice.) 

Learning, causes of the de- 
cline of, ,552. Neglect of pa- 
gan literature by the early 
Christians, 554. Blighting 
influence of superstition 
and asceticism, .555. Cor 
ruiition of the Latin 
tongue, 557. Rules ob- 
served in its pronuncia- 
tion, 557, 5.58. Krrors of the 
populace, 558. Changes 
wrought by the Italians 
and French, 559. Neglect 
of quantity, 5{)1. Speci- 
mens of verses by St. 
Augustin and others, 5()-2, 
notes. Change of l^atin 
into Romance, .'>(i3. Ital- 
ian corruptions of the Lat- 
in, 564. Ellect of the dis- 
use of Latin, ib. Extent 
of Charlemagne's and Al- 
fred's learning, 565, and 
note. Ignorance of the 
clergy, 566, 567. Scarcity 
of books, 567. Erasure of 
manuscripts, ib. Lack of 



eminent learned men, ib. 
John Scotus and Silvester 
II., 567, and note. Pre- 
servative effects of reli- 
gion on the Latin tongue, 
568. Non-existence of li- 
braries, 569, note. Preva- 
lence of superstitions, 569, 
570. Revival of literature, 
640. Study of civil law. 
640, 641. Establishment 
of public schools, 642. Ab- 
elard and the Universitv 
of Paris, 643. Oxford Uni- 
versity and its founders, 
644. Rapid increase of 
universities, 645. Cause; 
of their celebrity, 646 
Spread of the scholastic 
philosophy, ib. Its emi 
nent disputants, 647. In. 
ttuence of Aristotle and 
of the Church, 647, 648. 
Unprofitableness of the 
scholastic discussions, 648. 
Labors of Roger Racon 
and Albertus Magnus, 649, 
650, and note. Cultivation 
of the new languages, 650. 
Tlie troubaxlours and their 
productions, 650-652. Ori- 
gin of the French Ian 
guage, 6,52. Early French 
compositions, 652, 653 
Norman tales and ro 
mances, 653. The Roman 
de la Rose, 654. Frencli 
prose writings, 655. For 
mation of the Sjianish Ian 
guage : tlie Cid 6.">(). Ra])id 
growth of the Italian Ian 
guage, 657. Dante and his 
Divine Comedy, 657, 65,s 
Petrarch and his writings. 
661 -6()3. Dawn of tlie Ei'ig- 
lisli tongue, 663. Laya- 
nion's Brut, ib. Robert of 
Gloucester and other met- 
rical writers, 664. Merit 
of Piers Plowman's Vis- 
ion, ib. Cause of the slow 
progress of the English 
language, ib. Earliest com- 
positions in English, 665. 
Pre-eminence of Cliaucer, 
666, 667. Hevival of clas- 
sical learning, 667. Emi- 
nent cultivators thereof, 
ib. Invention of paper, 
668. Rarity and dear- 
ness of books, ib. I!e- 
covery of classical manu- 
scripts, 669, Eminent la- 
borers in tliis field, ih., 
670. Revival of I lie stndv 
of Greek, 671, 672. State 
of learning in Greece, 672. 
Services rendered by the 
mediaeval Greeks, 673. 
Opposition to the study 



of Greek at Oxford, 674 
Fame due to Eton and 
Winchester schools, 675. 
Invention of printing, ib. 
First books issued from 
the press, ib. First print- 
ing-presses in Italy, 676. 
Earliest use of the English 
language in public docu- 
ments, 679. 

Legislation under the earlv 
French kings, 106. The 
"Champ de Jlars," <ir 
Field of March, ib. Par- 
ticipation of the people in 
legislative proceedings, 
107. Charlemagne's legis- 
lative assemblies, 108. 
Cessation of national as- 
semblies, 109. Assemblies 
of the barons, ib. The 
cours plenieres, ib. Lim- 
itationof the king'spower, 
110. Ecclesiastical coun- 
cils and their encroach- 
ments, 111. Increase of 
the legislative power of 
the crown, and its causes, 
ib. Convocation of the 
States-General, 112. Con- 
stitution of the Saxon 
witenagemot,,3S2. Anglo- 
Norman legislation, 411. 
(See .lustice. Parliament, 
States-General.) 

Leo III. invests Charle- 
magne with the imperial 
insignia, 8. Cliarle- 
magne's authority over 
him, .330. 

VIII. confers on tlie em- 
peror the right of nomi- 
nating popes, 330. 

IX. leads his army in 

person, 145. Devotion of 
his conquerors towards 
him, ib. (See V apa 1 
Power.) 

Leon, foundation of the 
kingdom of, 229. Its king 
killed in battle, ib. lis 
union with Castile, 231. 

Leopold of Anstriadefi'atcd 
by the Swiss, 289. 

Libraries in tht^ fourteenth 
and (ifteenth centuries, 
668. 

Literature. (See Learning.") 

Lollards, rise of the, 625. 
Their resemblance to the 
Puritans, ib. 

Lombards, original settle- 
ment of the, 6. Exti ii- 
sion of their dominions, 
ib. Defeated by Pcjiin and 
Charlemagne, 6, 7. Theii- 
mode of legislating, 9. 
Progress of their citiis, 
146, 147. Fre(|ncncy of 
wars between thmi, 117 



LONDON. 



INDEX. 



MARCH. 



693 



Acquisition of territories 
by tlieiu, 147. Deniocnitie 
tyranny of the larger cit- 
ies, 148. Detitniclion of 
Lodi by the Milanese, 149. 
Courage of the citizens of 
Conio, ib. Exclusion of 
royal palaces from Lom- 
bard cities, ib. Siege and 
subjugation of Milan by 
Frederick Barbarossa, 150. 
EH'orts of the Milanese to 
regain their freedom, 151. 
Destruction of Milan, ib. 
Leagueof the Lombard cit- 
ies, 152. Defeat and flight 
of Barbarossa, 15.'!. Peace 
of Constance, 154. Their 
wars with Frederick II., 
100. Party nature of tliese 
struggles, 101. Arrange- 
ment of the Lombard cit- 
ies, 101, 102. Checkered 
results of their conflicts 
with Frederick, 102. Their 
papal supporters, 163. 
Causes of their success, 
104. Their means of de- 
fence, 106. Internal gov- 
ernment of their cities, 
167. Revival of the otRce 
of podest^, 167. Position 
of aristocratic offenders 
among them, 167. Duties 
and disabilities of the po- 
desta, 167, 168 Their in- 
ternal dissensions, 108, 169. 
Artisan clubs and aristo- 
cratic fortifications, 169. 
Vindictivenessof comjuer- 
ors of all classes, ib. In- 
flammatory nature of pri- 
vate quarrels, and their 
disastrous results, 170. 
Moral deducible from the 
fall of the Lombard iei)ub- 
lics, 174. The Visconti in 
Lombardy, 204. {See Vis- 
conti.) 

London, municipal rights 
of, 5:!9. 

, early election of the 

magistrates of, 441. Its 
municipal divisions, 5:i9. 
Its first lord mayor, ib. 
Not exclusively a city of 
traders, 539. 

Longchanip (William, bisli- 
op of Ely), constitutional 
precedent established by 
the banishment of, 413. 

Loria (Roger di), naval suc- 
cesses of, 213. 

Lothaire (son of Louis the 
Debonair), associated in 
power with his father, 10. 
His jealousy' of his half- 
brother, 11. Territories 
allotted to him, 12, and 



7iofe. Cause of his excom- 
munication, 323. 

Lothaire (duke of S?ixony) 
elected emperor of Oer- 
niany, 265. Failure of his 
scheme of succession, ib. 
The picture and couplet 
relative to his coronation, 
338. 

Louis of Bavaria, emperor 
of Germany, 275. His con- 
test with the popes, 300. 
He aids the Visconti, ib. 
He dies unabsolved, 301. 

1, (the Debonair) suc- 
ceeds Cliarlemagne, 10. 
His character, ib. Asso- 
ciates his sons in power 
with him, ib. His second 
marriage and its conse- 
quences, 11. Enmity ot 
the clergy against him, ib. 
His attempted deposition 
by the bishops, 317. 

of Germany (son of the 

above) made king of Ba- 
varia by his father, 10. 
Share of the empire allot- 
ted to him on his father's 
death, U. 

II. (the Stammerer), 

conditions exacted by the 
French nobles from, 13. 

V. 1.3. 

VI., state of France at 

the accession of, 20. His 
contests with the Norman 
princes, ib. 

VII., untoward mar- 
riage of, and its conse- 
quences, 20. Confirms the 
rights of the clergy, 21. 
Joins in the second cru- 
sade, 28. His subniissive- 
ness to Rome, 354. 

V 1 1 1 ., opposes Raymond 

of Toulouse, 23. 

IX. (Saint Ijouis), acces- 
sion of, 23. Revolt of the 
barons against him, ib. 
Excellences of his charac- 
ter, his rare probity, etc. 
23, 24. His superstition, 
25. He embarks in the 
Crusades, ib. Calamitous 
results of his first crusade, 
30. His second expedition 
anil death, (7;. His Kstab- 
lishments, 1'J2. His oi)en 
air administrations of jus. 
tice, ib. The Pragmatic 
Sanction and its provis- 
ions, 349. His restraint 
on the Church holding 
laiul, 355. 

— .\. (Louis TTutiu), acces- 
sion and death of, 34. He 
renounces certain taxes, 
113. 



Louis XI., accession of, 55. 
His character and policy, 
ib. Bestows Normal. dy 
on his brother as an aji 
panage, 50. And then de 
priveshimof it,67. Grants 
pensions to the English 
king and his nobles, ib. 
His contests with Charles 
of Burgundy, 59. And 
with Mary of Burgundy, 
01. His last sickness ami 
its terrors, 62. His belief 
in relics, ib. Court boast 
relative to his encroach- 
ments, 117. He repeals 
the Pragmatic Sanction, 
373. His people oppose 
the repeal, ib. 

Louis XII. (.See Orleans.) 

of Hungary invades Na- 
ples, 215. 

of Anjou adopted by 

.Joanna of Naples, 210. 
His death, 217. 

1 1. of Anjou and Naples 

accession of, 217. Subdued 
by Ladislaus, ib. 

III. of Anjou and Na- 
ples called in by Joanna 
II., 216. His death, /6 

Lucius II. (pope), cause of 
the death of, 178. 

Luna (Alvaro de), influence 
exercised by, 238. Dis- 
graced and beheaded, (7*. 

(Antonio de) assassi- 

nates the Arclibishop of 
Saragossa, 250. 

(Frederick, count of), 

claims the throne of Ara- 
gon, 250. 

(Peter de). (See Bene- 
dict XIII.) 

M. 

Magna Charta, its principal 
articles, 414. Text of, 544. 

Maiidals ami their abuses, 
348. 

Manfred, brave retention of 
tlie imperial throne by, 
164. Killed, 172. 

Manicheans. (See Religious 
Sects.) 

Manners. (.See Chivalry, 
Domestic Life, Learning, 
Superstition.) 

Manutiictures. (See Trade.) 

.Manuscripts. (See Learn- 
iiif?-) 

Marcel (magistrate of Paris), 
why assassimited, 115. 

March (Roger, earl of), op- 
poses the Duke of Lancas- 
ter, 458. His significant 
policy, ib. His exclusion 
from the throne, 470, 532. 



694 



MABGARET. 



INDEX. 



NAPLES. 



Clemency of Henry V. tow- 
ards him, 5'-','i. 

Margiiret of Amjoii nuirrk-d 
to Henry \l., 479. ('on- 
sequences of lier inipolicv, 
53:j, 534. {See Henry VI.) 

Mariner's compass, tiadition 
of tlie iuveution of the, 
594. 

Maritime laws of early 
tiines, 505. i'revalence of 
piracy, 596, 597. Law of 
reprisals, 597. 

Marriages, capricious de- 
crees of the popes con- 
cerning, 34(5. Dispensa- 
tions and their abuses, ib. 

Martin (i)rince of Aragon) 
marries the queen of Sici- 
ly, 218. His death, ib. 

— ^(king of Aragon) suc- 
ceeds to his son's Sicilian 
dominions, 218. Contests 
for the A.agonese throne 
at his death, 250, 251. 

V. elected pope, 368. 

He convokes the Council 
of Pavia, ib. His concoi-- 
dat with England, 372. 
Towers reserved to him 
by the German concor- 
dats, ib. Rejection of his 
concordat by France, 373. 

JFary of Burgundy. (See 
Burgundy.) 

Muthias Corvinus. (See 
Corvinus.) 

Matilda (countess) be- 
queaths her dominions to 
lionie, 150. 

Maximilian of Austria mar 
lies Mary of Burgundy, 61 
Becomes king of tlie Ki> 
mans, 277. Ascends the 
German throne, 2^0. In 
stitiites the Aulic council. 

Mayor of the palace, impor- 
tance of the oflice of, 4, 05 
67. (See Charles Martel, 
I'epiu, Heristal, Ehroin 

Mi'dici, rise of the family, 
221. Character of Giovan 
ni, ib. Banishment and 
recall of Cosmo, 222. His 
death: his son IMero, ib. 
Death of Julian : popular- 
ity and princely career of 
l,()renzo, 223. Ills bank- 
rujilcv repaired at the cost 
of the state, ib. His title 
to esteem, 224. 
Mendicant friars, first ap- 
pearance of the, 344. Suc- 
cess of their preachings, 
ib. Their e.vtensive priv- 
ileges, 345. 
Mercenary troops. {See 

I\Iilitary Systems.) 
Merovingian dynasty, char- 



acter of the times during 
which it ruled, 2, 65, 66. 

Middle Ages, period com 
prised under tlie terin, 551 

Milan, its siege bv Frederick 
I., 150. Destruction of the 
citv, 151. Its statistics in 
the 13th century, 105. It 
public works, ib. Creation 
of the duchy of Milan, 176. 
(.See l/ombards.) 

Military systems of the Mid- 
dle Ages, character of the 
English troops at Crecy, 
Poitiers, and Azincourt, 
40, 49. Disadvantages of 
feudal obligations in long 
campaigns, 131. .Substitu- 
tion of mercenaries, 132. 
Canute's soldiers, and his 
institutes respecting them, 
1.33. The mercenaries of 
the Anglo-Norman kings, 
ib. Advantages of merce- 
nary troops, 134. High rate 
of pay to English soldiers, 
51, 133, and note. Estab- 
lishment of a regular force 
by Charles VII., 134. Mil- 
itary resources of the Ital- 
ian "cities, 205. Their for- 
eign auxiliaries, 206. Arms 
and armor, ib. Companies 
of adventurers : Guarnie- 
ri's systematic levies, ■<.07. 
Sir .John Hawkwood's ca 
reer (.see Hawkwood). Em- 
inent Italian generals and 
their services, 207, 208. 
Probable Hrst instance of 
lialf-|iay, ib. SnnUl loss 
of life in mediicval war- 
fai-e, 209. Long bows and 
cross-bows, 210. Advan 
tages and disadvanla.ifc; 
of armor, ib. Introduction 
of gui.i>o\vdcr, ib. Clum- 
siness of early artillery and 
tire-aruis, ib. Increased 
efficiency of infantry, 211. 

Mo.sruls, ravages of the, 302. 
.303. Their exploits under 
Timur, .304. 

Mohammed, advent of, 293. 
State of Arabia at the 
time, ib. Martial spirit of 
his svstem, ib. ("areer of 
his fo'llowers. {See Abbas 
sides. Moors, Ottomans 
Saracens, Turks.) 

II. attacks the Vene 

tians, 219. Failure of hi; 
assault upon Belgrade 
287. He captures (Jonstan 
tinople, 30ti. Unrealized 
schemes for his cxpiilsiou, 
ib. His l%iiro|>iaii sue 
cesses and reverses, ih. 

Monasteries, cultivation of 



waste lands by, 310. Less 
pure sources of income, 
ib., 311. Their exemjitioii 
from Episcopal control, 
323. Pre-ervation of books 
by them, 508. Extent of 
their charities, 575. Vices 
of their inmates, ib. Their 
anti-social influence, 574. 
Their agricultural exer- 
tions, 610. 
Money, high interest paid 
for," 597. Establishment of 
paper credit, 599. Banks 
of Italy, ib. Securities for 
public loans, ib. Changes 
in the value of money, 614, 
615. Comparative table 
value, 615, «o<e. (5eeCoin- 

ing-) 

Montfort (Simon de) lieads 
the crusade against the 
Albigeois, 22. 

(Simon de, earl of Lei- 
cester), his writs of sum- 
mons to'the towns of Eng- 
laml, 445. 

Moors, successes of the Span- 
iards against the, 2.30. Vic- 
tories of Alfonso VI., 232. 
Cordova taken from tliem, 
2.33. Cause of their non- 
expulsion from Si)ain, 234. 

Mowbray (Earl of Notting- 
ham and Duke of Norfolk), 
made lord aiipellant, 403. 
He e.spouses the king's in- 
terest, 404. His quarrel 
with Boliugbroke and its 
results, 468. 

.Municiiial institutions, 1.39. 
Municipal rights of Lon- 
don, 5.39. Italian munici- 
palities, 145 (see Lom- 
bards). Free cities of Ger- 
many. {See (iermany. Par- 
liament, Towns.) 

Murder, gradation of fines 
levied as imnishmi'nt for, 
amo'ig the Franks, 71. 
Bates of compensation 
among the Anglo-Sa.xoiis, 
380. 

N. 

Naples subjugated by Roger 
(iuiscard, 14"). Coutesfsfor 
its crown between Man- 
fred and Cliarlesof Anjoii, 
172. Aiurder of the right- 
ful heir by Charles, ib. 
Schemes n'lative to the 
severance of Sicily, 213, 
(see Sicily). Accession of 
Robert, 214. Queen .loiin- 
na and her murdered hus- 
band, 215.» Louis of Anjou 
and Charles 111., 216. 
Keign of Louis IL, 217. 



NAVARKE. 



INDEX. 



PAPAL. 



695 



Ambition of tlie young'Odofarclibisliop'). (SeeVun- 

Kiiifi; liUdislaus, ib. Hisl stiui.) 

di'iUli, ib. JouiiiKi II., Oli'i'on, laws of, 51)5. 

lier vices aud her favorites, lOrdeals, Mature of, 570. 

ib. Career of AlCoiiso, ib., Orleans (Louis, duke of,) al 



218 (see Alfonso V.). 1 ii 
vasioa of the kingdom bv 
John of Calabria, 211). Hi's 
failure, ib. Ferdinand se- 
cured on tlie throne, ib. 
His odious rule, ib. 

Navarre, origin of the kiug- 
doni of, 22i». 

Neustria, e.vtent of the do- 
minions so termed, 4, note. 
Its peculiar features as 
distinguished from Aus- 
trasia, ib. VVhexi tirst 
erected into a kingdom, 
3. IJestruclion of its in- 
dependence, i. 

Nevil (lord) impeached by 
the Commons, 457. 

Nicolas II. (pope), innova- 
tions introduced by, 331. 

Nobility, origin of in France, 
70, 1)0. Privileges confer- 
red on the class, '.),!. Con- 
seijuencesof marriage with 
lilei)eians, 93. Letters of 
ndbilily, wlien first grant- 
ed, '.»4. Ditlerent orders, 
and rights belonging to 
eacli, ib. Their right to 
coin money, 101. To levy 
private war, ib. Excesses 
of the Florentine nobili- 
ty, 184. Turbulence of the 
Spanish nobles, 230. Con- 
tests of the (ierman nobles 
with the cities, 278. Uural 
nobility, how supported, 
ib. Their career, how 
checked, 280. Source of 
tile influence of the Eng- 
lish nobility, 510. Their 
patronage of robbers, 518. 
German robber lords, 582. 
Legislative province of the 
English nobility. (5eel'ar- 
liament.) 

Norfolk (earl and duke of). 
(See liigod, Mowbray.) 

Normans, piratical pursuits 
of the, 10. Their plan of 
warfare, ib. Sulferings of 
the clergy at their hands, 
17. Conversion and settle- 
ment in France, ib. Their 
incursions into Italy, 144. 
Successes of their leaders, 
145. Their invasion of 
England. (See England.) 

Nottingham (earl of). (See 
Mowbray.) 

O. 

Oaths, papal dispensations 
from, 347. 



leged amours of, with 
(iiieen Isabel, 40, not 
Loses his poi)uIarity, 47. 
His assassination and its 
probable causes, ib. Com 
motions whicli ensued, ib. 
— (Louis, duke of, after- 
wards Louis XII.), claims 
the regency during the 
minority of Charles VIII., 
03. Instigates the convo- 
cation of the States-Gen 
eral, 118. 

Ostrogoths, occupation of 
Italy by the, 1. Annihila- 
tion of their dominion, 6. 

Othman. (See Ottomans.) 

Otho I. (the Great), benefits 
conferred upon Germany 
by, 2()2. 

II. and III., chosen em- 

jjerors of Germany, 202. 

IV. aided by the Jlilan- 

ese, 158. Enmity of the 
pope towards him, ib. Its 
consetjuences, 207. Ob- 
tains a disi)ensation from 
Innocent 1 1 1 ., 340. Rights 
surrendered by him to In- 
nocent, 347 

Ottoman dynastv, founded 
by Otlimiui, .■^02. Their 
European conquests, 303. 
Their reverses and revival 
under Amurath,304. They 
cajjture Constantinople, 
305. European alarm ex- 
cited thereby, ib. Institu- 
tion of the Janizaries, 300. 
Susjiension of Ottoman 
con(juests, ib. 

Oxford University. (See 
Learning.) 



Palermo, foundation of silk 
manufacture in, 593. 

Palestine, commercial value 
of the settlements in, 592. 
(Sec Crusades.) 

Pandects, discovery of the, 
040. 

Papal power, first germ of 
the, 319. Preceded by the 
patriarchate, ib. Charac- 
ter of Gregory 1., 320. His 
wary proceedings, ib. Con- 
vocation of the synod of 
Frankfort bv Boniface, 

321, 322. EfTect produced 
by tlie False Decretals, 

322. Papal encroachments 
on the hierarchy, 323. Ex- 



emption of monasteries 
from episcojKil control, ib. 
Kings compelled to suc- 
cumb to papal supremacy, 
ib. Origin of excommuni- 
cations, 324. Helpless po- 
sition of excommunicated 
persons, ib. Interdicts and 
their disastrous conse- 
quences, 325. Further in- 
terference with regal 
rights by the popes, ib., 320. 
Scandalous state of the pa- 
pacy in the tenth century, 
ib. Leo IX. 's reformatory 
efforts 328, ,329. Preroga- 
tives of the emperors rel- 
ative lo [lapal elections, 
329. Innovations of Pope 
Nicolas II., 331. Election 
anddeath of Alexander II., 
331, .332. Career of Grego- 
ry VII. (See Gregory VII.). 
Contest of his successors 
with Ilenrv IV. and V. of 
Germany, .333, 334. Calix- 
tns II. and the concordat 
of Worms, 334. i'apal op- 
posit ion to investitures, 
3.35. Abrogation of ecclesi- 
astical independence, 337. 
Papal legates and their 
functions, 337, 3.38. Alex- 
ander III. and Thomas a 
Becket, 339. Career of In- 
nocent III. (see Innocent 
III.). Height of the papal 
power in the 13th century, 
341. Promulgation of the 
canon law, :!42. Its anal- 
ogv to the Justinian code, 
343. Establishment of the 
mendicant friars, 344. Dis- 
pensations of marriage, 
346. Dispensations from 
oaths, .347. Encroachments 
on episcopal elections, ib. ; 
and on rights of patronage, 
348. JMandats and their 
abuse, ib. The I'ragmatic 
Sanction, .349. Pretexts 
for taxing the clei-gy, 
350. Clerical disaftection 
towards the popes, .351. 
Progress of ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction, ib., 352. Op- 
position thereto by Eng- 
land, 353. Cai'eer of IJoni- 
face VIII. (see Boniface 
VI IL). Decline of the pa- 
pacy, 359. Kemoval of the 
papal court to Avignon, 
360. Its contests with Lou- 
is of Bavaria, ib. Growing 
resistance to the popes, 
301. Kapacity of the Avi- 
gnon popes, 362. Partici- 
pation of the French kings 
in the plunder, .363. Inde- 
pendent conduct of Eng- 



G96 



PAPEU. 



INDEX. 



PETER. 



land, ib. Return of the 
popes to Rome, 364. Con- 
test between Urban VI. 
and Clement \n., 365. 
The two papal courts, 
ib. Three contemporary 
popes, ib. Proceedings at 
the (Jouncils of Pisa, Con- 
stance, and Basle, 306, 368 
(see Councils). Reflections 
pertinent thereto, 370-371. 
KU'ects of the concordat of 
Ascliatl'enburg, 372. Re- 
straints thereon in France, 

373. Further limits on 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 

374. I>ecline of jiapal in- 
fluence in Italy, and its 
causes, ib. (.See Church, 
Clergy, Monasteries.) 

Pajier, from linen, when in- 
vented, 66S. 

Paris, seditions at, 45. De- 
feat and harsh treatment 
of its citizens, ib. (See 
Parliament of Paris.) 

Parliament of England, con- 
stituent elements of the, 
436. Rijjht by which the 
spiritual peers sit, ib. 
Earls [ind barons, 4.37. 
Temmls-in-chief in Parlia- 
ment, 4.3S. First germ of 
representation, 439, 440. 
County representation, 
441. Parliaments of Henrv 
III., ib. Knights of the 
shire, how elected, ib 
First summoiiiuj; of towns 
to Parliament, 445. The 
Parliament of Acton Bur- 
nell, 447. Cause of sum- 
moning deputies from bor- 
oughs, 445. Division of 
P a r 1 i a m e n t into two 
houses, 448. Proper busi- 
ness of the House of Com- 
mons, ib. Complaint of the 
Commons in 130'J, 44'.t. 
Rights established by 
them, 4.50. Their struggle 
with the king relative to 
ta.xation, 4411-453. Concur- 
rence of both Houses in le- 
gislation made necessary, 
453. Distinction between 
statutes and ordinances, 
453-4.54. Interference of 
Parliament in matters of 
war and peace, 456. Right 
to in<}uire into public 
abuses, 457. Increaseofthe 
power of the Commons un- 
der Richard II., 4C0. Their 
protests against lavish ex 
p e n d i t u r e, 461. Their 
charges against the ICarl 
of Sutfolk, ib. Submis- 
sion of Richard to their 
demands, 46::i. They come 



to an understanding with 
him, 464. They tall under 
his displeasure, 464, 465. 
Servility of their submis- 
sion, 465. Necessity for de- 
posing liichard,46y. Cau- 
tious proceedings of Par- 
liament thereupon, 470, 
471. Rights acquired by 
the Commons during his 
reign, 47~. Their consti- 
tutional advances under 
the house of Lancaster, ib. 
Their exclusive right of 
taxation, ib. Their right 
of granting and control- 
ling supplies, 473. And to 
make same depend on re- 
dress of grievances, ib. 
Establishment of their le- 
gislative rights, 474, 47o. 
F'alsilication of then- in- 
tentious, how accom- 
plished, 475. Introduction 
of bills, |iublic and i)rivate, 
476. Parliamentary inter- 
ference with royal expen- 
diture, 477. Limitations 
laid on Henry IV ,477,478. 
Re-establishment of a good 
understanding with him, 
478. Harmony between 
Henry V. and the Parlia- 
ment, ib. Parliamentary 
advice sought on public af- 
fairs, 47'.». Their right to 
impeach ministers, ib. 
Henry \'l.'s mode of evad- 
ing. Suffolk's imi)each men t, 
480. Assertion of the privi- 
lege of Parliament, ib. 
Principles involved in 
Thorp's case, 481, 48:.'. In- 
fringements on liberty of 
speech, 48'.>. Privilege of 
originating monev-bills, 
482-484. The three es- 
tates of the realm, 484, 
note. Course of proceed- 
ings on other bills, ib. 
County franchise, in whom 
invested, 485. Represen- 
tation of towns, ib. Par- 
tial omission of boroughs, 
486, 487, and votes. Reluc- 
tance of boroughs to send 
members, 487. In whom 
theright to vote was vested, 
488, and note. Status of 
the meinbers, ib. Exclu-| 
sion of lawyers from thei 
Commons' House, 489. 
Members originally com- 
pelled to be residents, ib. 
Election irregularities and 
crown interference, 490. 
Constitution of the House 
of Lords, ib. Qualiflca- 
t ion of spiritual barons, 491. 
Barons by writ, ib., 492. 



Distinction between 
barons and bannerets, 492, 
493. Creation of peers by 
statute and by patent, 495. 
Clergy summoned to send 
representatives, 496-500. 
Remonstrances of the 
Commons against the en- 
croachments of the Coun- 
cil, 501,502. 

Parliament of Paris, consti- 
tution and sittings of the, 
124. Progress of its juris- 
diction, 126. Enregistra- 
tion of royal decrees con- 
tided to it, ib. Its spirited 
conduct in reference 
thereto, 127. Interference 
of the kings with its privi- 
leges, ib. Establishment 
of its independence by 
Louis XI., 127. Its claims 
on the respect of posterity, 
ib. 

Pa.schal IL (pope), opposi- 
tion to investitures by, 
3.35. 

Pastoureaux. (See Super- 
stitious.) 

Paulicians. (See Religious 
Sects.) 

Peers ol England. See No 
bility, Parliament.) 

Peers of France, original 
constitution of the, 124. 

People, their lawlessness, 
577. Their general im- 
morality, ib. 

Pepin Heristal, usurpation 
of supremacy by, 4. He 
restores the national coun- 
cil, 107. 

Pepin (son of Charles Mar- 
tel), deposes Chilperic III., 
6. Ascends the throne, 
ib. Subdues the Lom- 
bards, 7. His legislative 
assemblies, 107. 

Perjurv, prevalence of, in 
the Middle Ages, 578. 

Perrers (Alice). (See Ed- 
ward III.) 

Peter the Cruel, succession 
of, crimes perpetrated by, 
236. His discomfiture and 
death, 237. 

Peter the Hermit. (See 
Crusades.) 

Peter II. of Aragon surren- 
ders his kingdom to the 
pope, 341, .342. 

111. of Aragon, assists 

.John of Procida, 213. He 
accepts the crown of Sici- 
Iv, 214. 

IV. of Aragon. charac- 
ter and reign of, 248. Con- 
sequences of his attempts 
to settle the crown on his 
daughter, 249. 



PETIIAUCH. 



INDEX. 



697 



Petrarch, liis personal char 
acti'ristics, (iOl. His great 
jiopuhuity, ib. Jlis pas- 
sicMi for Laura, ()(!_. Char- 
actej' of his poetry, 06:3. 
His elibrts for tlie ijreser- 
vation of iiiaiiuseripis, Oro. 
Was Laura luarrieLl or 
siii.nle y 67S, 07'J. 

rhilii) Augustus, accessiou 
of, 'JO. He cites John king 
of England before him, 
■^1. Deprives the English 
crown of its French pos- 
sessions, ib. Joins in the 
third crusade, 2'J. Pope 
Gregory's menaces tow- 
ards him, 336. His fear 
of Hmocent III., 340. 
Takes back his repudiated 
wife, ib. 

III. (the Bold), acces- 
sion of, 30. 

IV. (the Fair), accession 

of, 31. Policy adoi)ted by 
him, ib. His reseulnicut 
against the English king, 
ib. His fraudulent con- 
duct towards him, 32. 
Successful resistance of 
the Flemings against liis 
attacks, «6. His further ac- 
quisitions, ib. And siege 
of Lyons, ib. He taxes 
the clergy, 356. He arrests 
the pope's legate, 357. He 
burns the pope's bulls, 
358. Retaliation of the 
pope, ib. His stratagem 
against the pope, 351). Its 
consequences, ib. 

Philip V. (the Long), as- 
sunijition of the regency 
of France by, 34. Violates 
his treaty with his broth- 
er's widow, .35. Salic law 
contirmed in his reign, 36. 
Result of his attempt at 
an excise on salt, 113. 

VI. (of Valois), regency 

and coronation of, 36. 
.Sketch of his character, 
.30. His debasements of 
the coin, 105. 

of Suubia elected em- 

)ieror of Germany, 267. 
His assassination, ib. 

Piedmont, comparative ob- 
scurity of the history of, 
162, 7iote. 

Piracy, temptations to the 
practice of, 5'.to. Difficulty 
of repressing it, 604. 

Pisa, early naval and com- 
mercial importance of, 101. 
Her wars witli Genoa, 192. 
Her reverses and sale to 
Florence, ib. Effect of 
the Crusades on her pros- 
perity, 592. 



Pisani (Vittor) defeated by 
the Genoese, and impri.'^ 
oned by the Venetians, 
104. His triumphant re 
call from prison, ib. 

Pius II. {See jSiueas Syl 
vius.) 

Podestii, peculiarities of the 
oflice of, 107, 16S. 

Podiebrail ((ieorge), vigor 
ous rule of Boliemia by, 
285. 

Poetry, popular, 539. 

Poggio Bracciolini, services 
of, in the revival of learn- 
ing, 670. 

Poitiers, battle ol. {See Ed 
ward III.) 

Pole (Micliael de la, earl of 
Sutt'olk), lord chancellor, 
401. His impeachment 
and sentence, (6. 

Pragnuitic .Sanction of Bour- 
ges, 373. Repealed by 
Louis XI., ib. Its pojju- 
larity with the people, ih. 
Liberties secured by it, 
374, 375. 

Sanction of St. I^ouis, 

enactment of the, 349. 

Prague University , 284. Fate 
of its rector, ib. 

Prerogative of the kings of 
England, observations on 
the, 505, 506. (,S'ee English 
Constitution.) 

Prices of commodities, C14, 
615. 

Printing, invention of, 675. 
First books printed, 676. 
Italian presses, ib. {See 
Learning.) 

Provence annexed to the 
Frencli dominions, 64. 
Note upon its history, ib. 

Public weal, origin of the 
war of the, 55. 

Purveyance, oppressive op- 
eration of the prerogative 
of, 506. 

R. 

Rachiniburgii, difference be- 
tween them and the sca- 
bini, lOS, note. 

Raymond VI. (count of Tou- 
louse) e.xcommunicated by 
Innocent III., 22. Re- 
verses of bis son Ray- 
mond, 23. 

Regencies, instances of re- 
gencies in England, and 
principles deducible there- 
from, 527-520. 

Religious sects, moral im- 
provement accelerated [by 
the growth of, 610. Ten- 
ets of the Manicheans 
and Paulicians, 620, and 
note. The Albigenses,and 



controversies respecting 
tliem, 621. Origin of the 
Walilenses, ib. Maniche- 
ism of the Albigenses, 622, 
Persecutions at Oxford, ib. 
Secret readings of the 
Scriptures, 623. Permis- 
sions and prohibitions 
concerning the sacred 
writings, ib. (Continued 
spread of heresies, 624. 
Strictnesses of Lollard- 
ism, 025. Schism of the 
Hussites, ib. 

Representation of the towns. 
(.See Parliament, States 
General.) 

Representative legislation, 
lirst germ of, 108. {See 
Parliament.) 

Revenues of the kings of 
France, how derived, 104. 
(,S'ee Ta.vation.) 

Richard I., non-success of, 
against Philip Augustus, 
21. Joins with Philip in 
the Crusades, 29. His 
prowess ; terror excited 
by his name, ib. Depo- 
sition of his chancellor, 
413. Enactment of the 
laws of Oleron imputed to 
him, 595. His character 
as a troubadour, 651. 

— II loses ground in 
France, 44. His corona- 
tion, 450. His council 
during his minority, ib. 
His struggles with Parlia- 
ment, 460. Sketch of his 
character, ib. His depend- 
ence on favorites, ib. 
Determined conduct of the 
Commons towards him, 
464. He yields to their 
demands, J6. His further 
attempts at independent 
rule, 463. His complaint 
against the Commons, 405. 
Their submission, ib. His 
seizure of the Duke of 
Gloucester, and other ar- 
bitrary ac^s, 466-468. Ne- 
cessity for his deposition, 
ib. Progress of the consti- 
tution during liis reign, 
471. Extent of his mal- 
practices relative to the 
raising of money, 472. 
His attack upon Haxey, 
4(55, 482. 

Richard (earl of Cornwall), 
chosen emperor of Ger- 
many, 268. Absurdity of 
the choice, ib. 

— (duke of York) (see 
York). Rienzi (Nicola di), 
sudden accession to pow- 
er of, 179. His e.xile, re- 
call, and death, 180. 



698 



ROBERT. 



INDEX. 



SPORTS. 



Robert of Gloucester, and 
other metrical writers, 004. 

of N:iple.s, wise rule of, 

214. 

(count palatine) super 

seiles VV^euceslaus as eni- 
peior of (jierinany, 275. 

lloclielle, patriotism of the 
citizens of, 4;i. 

Uodoli)h of Hapsburg elect 
ed emperor of Germany, 
271. Austria conferred 
upon his son, 272. His as 
cendency iu Switzerland 
287. 

Kollo of Normandy, conver 
sion of, 17. 

Komance language. (See 
Learning.) 

Romano (Eccelin da). {See 
Kccelin.) 

Rome, subversion of the em 
jilre of, 1. Portion which 
remained subject to it, ib. 
I'artition of its i)rovinces 
among their concpierors, 
70. Internal state in the 
tenth century, 141. Infa- 
mous conduct of can<li- 
d.iles for the papal chair, 
142. Execution of the 
consul Crescentius, ib. 
Schemes of Innocent III. 
for aggrandizing the holy 
see, luf). Increas<> of the 
temporal authority of the 
pojii's, 177. E.xpulsiou of 
po])es by the citizens, 178. 
The senators and their ju- 
risdiction, i6. Mutual an 
imosities of the nobles, 
ib. Rise and fall of Rien 
zi, 17'.>, ISO. Transient re- 
vival of the republican 
spirit, ib. (See Papal 
Rower.) 



Saint Boniface. (See Win- 
frid.) 

Denis, sum paid for r 

dec iiuMg the abbot of, 17. 

.lolm of Jerusalem, 

knights of, 2'.). Their enor- 
mous possessions, ib. 

Louis. (See Louis IX.) 

Poll (count of) executed 

on the scHllold, 57. 

Saladin, conipiest of Jerusa- 
lem by, 2'.). 

Salic lands, characteristics 
of, 70, 71, and note. 

Salic law, circumstances 
which led to tlie contirnui- 
tion of the, :i5, liO. Date 
of its enactment, 1.38. Its 
incompleteuess as a code, 
ib. 



Sancho the (ireat bestows 
Castile on his secuud son, 
22'.). 

Sanclio IV., 237. 

Sanctuary, institution of tlie 
privilege of, 575. 

Saracens, expulsion of tlie, 
from France, 5. Their 
inroads upon Italy, 15 
Kndon's great victory over 
them, 00. Their conflicts 
with tile Cliristiau:) (see 
Crusades). They concpier 
Spain, 227, 228. Encroach- 
ments of the Christians 
on their territories, 228. 
JMainspring of their liero- 
isni, 2113. Their Eastern 
conquests, 2'.t4. Their tri 
uniphs in the AVest, ib 
Ellect of their successes, 
205. Their internal dis- 
sensions, ih. (See Cru- 
sades, JMoors.) 

Saragossa taken from the 
Moors, 230. 

Sardinia conquered by the 
Risans, 101. Its cession 
to the king of Aragon, 102. 

Saxons, obstinate resistance 
to Charlemagne by the, 7. 
Enormous number be- 
headed by him, 0. True 
cause of their wars witli 
the Franks, 06. (-See An 
glo-Saxons.) 

.Scabini, rei)resentative cliar 
acter of the, 108. Differ- 
ence between them and 
the Rachind)urgii, ih., 
note. Their funclii)ns, 120, 

Scaccario, Dialogus de, 422. 

.Scanderbeg, protracted op 
position to the Turks by, 
30G. 

Scandinavia and her sea 
kings, 370, 377. 

Sclavonians, territories oc- 
cupied by the, 15. 

■Scotus (Duns), notices of, 
047, 048. 

Scotus (John), an exception 
to the ignorance of his 
times, 5()7, and note. 

Scrope (lord), 512. 

Serfdom and villenage, dis- 
tinctive features of, 90, 09. 
(See Villeins.) 

Sforza Attendolo, rise to dis- 
tinction of, 208. 

Sforza ( Fra nccscn), powerful 
position achieved by, 200. 
Becomes Duke of Milan, 
ib. Joins in the quadru- 
ple league, 218. Accession 
and assassination of liis 
sou Galeazzo, 220. I'olii'v 
of Ludovico Sforza, ih. 
He directs the French 



king's attention towards 
Naples, 225. Short-sight- 
edness of his views, ih 

Sheriffs, partiality of, in elec- 
tions, 480, H o w originally 
apjioiuted, 400. 

Sicily, conquest of , by Roger 
Guiscard, 145. Its subsc- 
quent fortunes, 154, 155. Its 
rebellion against Charles 
of Anjou, 213. The 8icil- 
ian A'espers, ib. Oppo- 
sition of the Sicilians to 
Cliarles II. ot Naples, 214. 
Settlement of. the crown 
on Frederick, ib. Union 
of Juicily with Aragon, 218. 

Sigismund elected emjieror 
of Germany, 276. His safe- 
conduct violated, 284. Ac- 
quires the crown of Hunga- 
ry, 280. Ilisconduct at the 
Council of Constance, 284. 

Silk mtinufacture establish- 
ed in Palermo, 503. 

Sylvester Tl. (pope), scien- 
tilic acquirements of, 567, 
note. 

Sinionv. (See Church, Cler- 
gy-) 

Slavery, existence of, in an- 
cient times, 97. Subndt- 
ted to by the poor for sub- 
sistence' sake, 98. Vene- 
tian and English slave- 
trading, 583, 584. 

Society, state of. (See Archi- 
tecture, Chivalry, Clergy, 
Feudal System, Learning, 
Superstition, Trade, Vil- 
lenage.) 

.Spain, character of the Visi- 
gothic kingdoms in, 227. 
Its conquest by the Sara- 
cens, i?). Kingdoms of Le- 
on, Navarre, Aragon, and 
Castile, 229 Reverses of 
the Saracens, 230. Charter- 
ed towns, 231. Establish- 
ment of military orders, 
232. Non-expulsion of the 
Moors, 234. Its probable 
cause,??) Alfonso A. and 
his short-comings, 235. 
Frequent defection of the 
nobles, 230. Peter the Cru- 
el, ib. Accession of the 
Trastaniare line, ib. Dis- 
grace and execution of Al- 
varo de Luna, 2.38. Con- 
tests after Henry IV. 's 
death, 239. Constitution 
of the national councils. 
239, 240. Composition of 
the Cortes, ih. Its trade 
relations with England, 
5'.)1. (See Aragon, Castile, 
Cortes.) 

Sports of the field, popular- 



STATES GENERAL. 



INDEX. 



TUSCANY. 



(599 



ity of, 579. Addiction of the 
clergy thereto, ib. Evils 
atteudaiit thereou, 580. 

States-General of France 
memorable resistance to 
taxation by the, 41. Con- 
voked by Philip IV., 112. 
Probability of their earlier 
convocation canvassed, ib 
Philip's politic reason for 
summoning them, (6. Ex 
tent of their rights as to 
taxation, 112, 113. Their 
resolute proceedings in 
1.355 and 1356, 113, 114 
Tlieir protest against the 
debasement of the coin, 
113. Disappointment oc 
casioned by their proceed 
ings in 1357, 114, 115. They 
compel Charles VI. to re- 
voke all illegal taxes, 115 
Effect of their limited 
functions, 116. Theoretical 
respect attached to their 
sanction, ib. Provincia' 
estates and their jurisdic- 
tion, 117. Encroachments 
of Louis XI., 118. The 
States-General of Tours, 
ib. lleans by which their 
deliberations were jeopar- 
dized, ib. Unpalatable 
nature of their remon- 
strances, 119. 

Stephen (king), cruel treat- 
ment of the people in his 
reign, 409, note. 

Succession to kingly and 
other dignities. (See He- 
reditary Succession.) 

Suevi, part of the Roman 
empire held by the, 1. 

Sutl'olk (duke of), impeach- 
ment of, 479. 

(earl of). (See Pole.) 

Sumptuary laws, enactment 
and disregard of, (502, note. 

Superstition, learning dis- 
couraged by, 554. Its uni- 
versal prevalence, 569. In- 
stances of its results, ib. 
Ordeals, 570. Fanatical 
gatherings : the Wliite 
Caps, 571. The Pastou- 
reau.x,i6. The Flagellants, 
572. The Bianchi, ib. Pre 
tended miracles, and their 
attendant evils, 573. Mira- 
cles ascribed to the Virgin, 
574. Redeeming feature; 
of tlie system, ?6., 575. Pen 
ances and Pilgrimages, 
576, 577. (See Religious 
Sects.) 

Swineford (Katherine), pro 
ceedings relative to the 
marriage of, 464. 

Switzerland, early history 
of, 287. Ascendency of 



Rodolph, ib. Expulsion 
and defeat of Albert and 
Leopold, 289. Formation 
of the Swiss confedera- 
tion, ib. Indomitable hero 
ism of the Swiss, 291, 292 
Their military excellence, 
291. Failure of Maximil 
ian's attempt to subjugate 
them, 292. 
Syagrius, Roman provinces 
governed by, 2. Defeated 
iby Clovis, ib. 



Taborites, fanaticism and 
courage of the, 285, 625 

Tartars. (See Moguls.) 

Taxation : clumsy substi- 
tutes for taxes in the Mid- 
dle Ages, 104. Conditions 
annexed by the States 
General to a grant of 
ta.xes, 115. Tuxes under 
the Anglo-Norman kings 
419, 420, and notes. (See 
States-General.) 

Temple, knights of the. (See 
Knights Templars.) 

Tenure of land under the 
Anglo-Saxons and Anglo- 
Normans, 388-391. (See 
Feudal System.) 

Teutonic knights, establish- 
ment of the order of, 29 

Theodoric, disregard of 
learning bv, 556. 

Thierry (son of Clovis), ter- 
ritories possessed by, 3. 

Timur, conquering career 
of, 304. 

rithes, establishment of, 
311. Charlemagne's capit- 
ulary relative thereto, 311, 
312. 

Toledo taken from the 
Moors, 230. 

Torriani. (.See Visconti.) 

Toulouse, non-submission 
of the counts of, to the 
kings of P'rance, 21. Their 
fall, 23. (See Raymond VI.) 

Towns and cities, earliest 
charters granted to, 128 
Privileges of incorporated 
towns, 129, 130. Their re 
lationship towards the 
crown, 130. Independence 
of maritime towns, 131 
Chartered towns of Spain, 
231. Their privileges and 
duties, 232. Cause of their 
importance, 240. Cities of 
Germany (see Germanv). 
Cities of Italy, ( See Flor- 
ence, Genoa, Milan, Pisa, 
Venice.) 
— of England, progress of 
the, 441. Conversion of in 



dividual tributes into bor- 
ough rents, ib. Incorpo- 
ration of towns by charter, 
442,443. Prosperity of the 
towns, 443. Early impor- 
tance and populousness of 
London, ib. Participa- 
tion of its citizens in con- 
stitutional struggles, 444. 
First summoning of towns 
to Parliament, ib. (See 
Municipal Institutions.) 

Trade and commerce, me- 
diaeval nonexistence of, 
581. Barriers to their 
progress, 582. E-xteut of 
foreign commerce, 583. 
Home traffic in slaves, 586. 
Woollen manufactures and 
vacillating policy of the 
English kings relative 
thereto, 585-587. Opening 
of the Baltic trade, 589. 
Growth of English com- 
merce, 590 Opulence of 
English merchants, (6 In- 
crease of maritime traflic, 
591. Commercial emi- 
nence of the Italian states, 
591. Invention of the mari- 
ner's compass, 594. Com- 
pilation of maritime laws, 
594-595. Frequency and 
irrepressibility of piracy, 
595-596 Practice of re- 
prisals, 596. Liability of 
aliens for each other's 
debts, 597. Trade profits 
and rates of interest, ib. 
Price of corn and cattle, 
612. 

Trial by combat, ceremoni- 
als attending, 121, note. 

Trial by jury and its ante- 
cedents, 385-386. Early 
modes of trial, 397. Abo- 
lition of trial by ordeal, 
398. Ditference between 
ancient and modern trial 
by jury, ib. Original func- 
tions of juries, ib. Origin 
of the modern system, 399. 

Troubadours (the) and their 
productions, 651-653. 

Troves, conditions of the 
treaty of, 50. 

Turks, Italian fears of the, 
220. Triumphant progress 
of their arms, 299. Their 
defeat by the Crusaders 
and Alexius, 300. Their 
settlement under Othman, 
.302. War declared against 
them at Frankfort, 305. 
The .Janizaries, 306. (See 
Ottomans.) 

Tuscany, espousal of the pa- 
pal cause, 162. Progress 
of its cities. (See Flor- 
ence.) 



roo 



INDEX. 



ZISCA. 



U. 

Urban II., encouragement 
of the Crusades by, '^iO. His 
couoession to the kiugs of 
Castile, 335. 

V. retraiisfers tfie papal 

court to Avignon, 361. 

VI. aids diaries of Du- 

razzo in his designs on Jo- 
anna of Naples, '.^15 His 
contest with Clement VII., 
305. 

Urgel (count of) lays claim 
to the crown of Aragon, 
250. Rejection of his pre- 
tensions, lb. 

Usury treated as a crime, 
5yy, note. 



Valencia, constitution of the 
kingdom of, 258. 

Vandals, portions of the Ro 
man Empire possessed by 
the, 1. 

Vase of Soissons, story of 
the, 75. 

Vassals and Vassalage. (See 
Feudal System.) 

Vavassors, privileges attach- 
ing to the rank of, &4, note 

Venice, conflicts of, with Ge- 
noa, 193. Defeat of her 
admiral by the Genoese, 
194. Insolenceof the latter 
towards her ambassadors, 
ib. Successful tactics of 
her doge, 195. Triumph of 
her fleet, 196. Her alleged 
early independence, 199. 
Her subjection to the em- 
perors, ib. Her Dalmatian 
and Levantine acquisi- 
tions, ib. Her govern- 
ment : powers of the doge, 
200, 201. The great coun- 
cil, 201. Checks to undue 
i'ltluence onthe part of the 
doge, tb. Singular com- 
plication in ballots for the 
dogeship, 202. Marin Fa- 
lieri's treason, ib. The 
council of ten and its se- 
cret proceedings, ib. Ter- 
ritorial acquisitions of 
Venice, 203. Venetian 
comiuests under Carmag- 
nola, 204. Wars of the Re- 
public with Mohammed 
11., 219. 

Verdun, treaty of, 12. 

Vere, favoritism of Richard 
II. towards, 460. His fu- 
neral, 464. 

Verona, seized by Francesco 
da Carrara, 204. 

Villeins and villenage : con- 
ditions of villeins, 97, 98. 
Consequences of their 



marriages with free per- 
sons, 99. Privileges ac 
quired by them, 100, and 
note. Villenage never es 
tablished in Leon and Cas- 
tile, 231. Dependence of 
the villein on his lord, 520 
Condition of liis property, 
and children, .ib. Legal 
distinctions, ib. Difficul- 
ties besetting the abolition 
of villenage, 521. Gradual 
softening of its features, 
522,523. Merger of villeins 
into hired laborers, 523 
Eflectsof the anti-poll-tax 
insurrection, 525. Disap 
pearauce of vUlenage, 526, 
527. 

Virgin, absurd miracles as 
cribed to the, 574. 

Visconti and I'orriani fami 
lies, rivalry of the, 174 
Triumph of the Visconti, 
176. Giovanni Visconti's 
assassination, 204. Filip 
po Visconti's accession, ib 
His ingratitude to Car- 
m;ignola, ib. His alliance 
with Alfonso, 218, 219. 
Quarrels of the family 
with the popes, 360 

Visigoths, portions of the 
Roman provinces possess 
ed by the, 1. Their mode 
of dividing conquered 

Erovinces, 70. Dirterence 
etween the Frank mon 
archy and theirs, ib. 

W. 

Wages, futility of laws for 
the regulation of, 523. (See 
Laborers.) 

Waldenses. (.See Religious 
Sects.) 

War, private exercise of the 
right of, 103. By whom 
checked and suppressed, 
ib. Its prevalence among 
the German nobles, 280, 
281. 

Warna, circumstances which 
led to the battle of, 286. 

Warwick (earl of) made a 
lord appellant, 463. Be- 
headed by Richard II., 474. 

Water-Ordeal, (.SeeOrdeals.) 

Wenceslaus, confirmed in 
the Imperial succession, 
275. His deposition, ib. 
He abets the league of the 
Rhine, 380. 

Weregild, or compensation 
for murder. (See Murder.) 

WiclifT (John), influence of 
the tenets of, 372, 524. 624. 

William of Holland elected 
emperor of Germany, 268. 



William the Conqueror : po- 
sition of England at its 
conquest by him, 400. Al- 
leged inadequacy of the 
military forces of the Sax- 
ons, ib. Their fruitless re- 
bellions against him, 401. 
Instances of his oppressive 
conduct, ib., 402. His dev- 
astating clearances for 
forests, 404. And iidm- 
nian forest laws, ib. His 
enormous revenues, 405. 
His feudal innovations, 
406. Policy of his ma- 
norial grants, ib. Tyranny 
of his government, 408. 
Statutes of, 4.32, 4.33. 

Windsor Castle, laborers for 
the erection of, how pro- 
cured, 507. 

Winfrid (St. Boniface), im- 
portance of the ecclesi- 
astical changes effected by, 
321. 

Winkelried, the Swiss pa- 
triot, heroic death of, 291. 

Wisbuy, ordinances of, 595. 

Witikind, acknowledgment 
of Charlemagne's author- 
ity by, 8. 

Witenagemot' its charac- 
teristics, .382 How often 
assembled, 431. (See An- 
glo-.Saxons.) 

Wladislaus crowned king of 
Hungary, 286. Viobiteshis 
treaty with the Turks, ib. 
Its fatal results, (6. 

Woollen manufacture estab- 
lished in Flanders, 535. 
E.xport of wool from Eng- 
land, 586. English wool- 
len manufacture, 587. Pol- 
icy adojited towards the 
Flemings, ib. Law.s rela- 
tive to the trade, 5S8. 

Worms, Diet of (See Diet.) 

Wykeham (bishop of \\ in- 
chester) invested with the 
great seal, 463. 

Y. 

Vork (Richard, duke of) ap- 
pointed protector to Hen- 
ry VI., 531. His claim to 
the throne, 533, 5.34. His 
cautious policy, (6. 

Yorkists and Lancastrians, 
wars of the, 634, 535. 

Z. 

Zimisces (John), military 
exploits of, 298 

Zisca (.John), the blind hero, 
victories of the Bohemians 
under, 211. His exploits; 
enthusiasm of his follow- 
ers, 284, 285. 



